High Quality Fan Flick Leads To $8 Million Hybrid Fan/Investor Funded Pro Film

from the these-things-evolve dept

Four years ago, we wrote about the amazing quality of Star Wreck, a fan-created Star Trek spoof that was created on effectively no budget, for fun, but which had stunningly good special effects (especially for no budget). We pointed this out not to say the future of film was such fan labors of love, but to note that the claims that professional movies needed $200 million budgets to create amazing special effects was a myth. However, we've had a few Hollywood insiders use this particular story time and time again to falsely suggest that we claimed that Star Wreck represented the future of the movie business.

But, what's interesting is what's happened since Star Wreck. As we noted last year the filmmakers behind Star Wreck have been busy at work on their latest project, called Iron Sky, and they were experimenting with a sort of hybrid funding model that included a fair amount of fan support, whereby fans could buy "War Bonds" to crowdfund a portion of the movie.

Wired is now reporting that the film has raised 90% of its $8.5 million budget, and they're close enough that plans are moving forward to get the movie production underway. Again, this particular effort was a hybrid. Part of the money is fan funded and part of it involves traditional movie investors.

But what's most interesting to me is how this story progressed. It went from some fans messing around and creating a rather impressive film visually speaking, to a new $8.5 million production. $8.5M is still a small amount from a movie-making perspective, but it's not nothing. Plenty of excellent indie films have been made for a lot less. And, of course, you never know what happens next, after this film is made as well. And that was really the point. It was never that the model that created Star Wreck was the answer, but that the overall ecosystem is evolving, and its evolving to a world where the fans and the community really area a part of things, rather than looked at as evil people who just want stuff for free. Embracing your community leads to wonderful possibilities.
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Filed Under: business models, fan funding, films, iron sky, star wreck


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  • icon
    Hephaestus (profile), 6 Jul 2010 @ 1:42pm

    "Embracing your community leads to wonderful possibilities."

    Do you have someone that just writes the last lines of your posts. can I use them in fortune cookies?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Dark Helmet (profile), 6 Jul 2010 @ 1:53pm

      Re:

      More importantly, can you do a short video of yourself saying them while doing a Caruso? That'd be priceless....

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Jul 2010 @ 2:10pm

    "Embracing your community leads to wonderful possibilities."

    Possibilities lead to greed, which leads to the dark side.

    What's that you say? Wrong Star****? Screw Gene Roddenberry and the dilithium crystal he rode in on.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    NAMELESS.ONE, 6 Jul 2010 @ 5:44pm

    BUT now you will have top pay for the film

    FAIL

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Nastybutler77 (profile), 7 Jul 2010 @ 10:08am

    Typo police...

    "its evolving to a world where the fans and the community really area a part of things,"

    Should be "are?"

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Ashley, 19 Jul 2010 @ 5:51am

    Startup funding for entrepreneurs

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    link to this | view in chronology ]


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