Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Kick Starting A New(ish) Movement


Renowned comedic actor Zach Braff has been greenlit by Worldview Entertainment to produce his film, Wish I was Here, after successfully garnering $2.6 million of crowd funding from Kickstarter. In total, the film’s budget is projected to be $10 million and will star Zach Braff in a plot that is reminiscent to a general prodigal-son-rekindles-ties-with-family story arch.

Perhaps as more and more films gain large-scale backing from sites like Kickstarter, more independent moviemakers will be able to produce more autonomously, possibly retriggering a renaissance of subgenre exploration, as writers will be able to take risks that large studios would never back otherwise.

That being said, Kickstarter purists are enraged that big name actors like Zach Braff and Kristen Bell ($5 million for Veronica Mars) are using the site for multi-million ventures, which in their minds, undermine the entire premise of the site helping innovators who are pulling themselves up by the bootstraps. Perhaps an alternative version of Kickstarter could be founded where fans of certain creative minds could crowdfund their projects in a collective manner—away from big studios and non-film projects.


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