Dedicated Fans Bring Movie Back To Life, Contributing $346k In Just A Few Weeks

from the connecting-with-fans... dept

A bunch of folks have sent over this story of how the author of the popular book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller, had been working for years on turning the book into a movie, but in the middle of September, he posted to his website that it just wasn't going to happen, because the traditional funders of movies weren't interested in the movie. The book apparently is a sort of coming of age, semi-autobiographical story, involving aspects of the author's spiritual/religious journey. As Miller explained, while the book is a "Christian" book, it has elements in it that those who traditionally fund "Christian movies" didn't want to support (for example, something involving putting a giant condom on a church steeple...). And he suggested that, while the book has found an audience among students going through similar situations, those are not the people who generally fund movies.

Or, perhaps they are. Miller had been able to bring together some funding, but came up $125,000 short of what was needed for the indie film production (including some well-known actors). After saying that the project was dead, some fans apparently stepped up and suggested he try to raise the missing $125,000 on Kickstarter. In the course of about a month, not only did they hit the $125,000 mark in just one week, but fans of the book continued contributing to the cause, leading them to bring in $346,000 by the time the project closed.

That's a rather stunning amount. Prior to this, I believe the largest Kickstarter project had been the famous Diaspora distributed social networking project that got tons of press for breaking $100,000. Of course, no one is suggesting that this is the way to fund all films or that this will work in every case (we've certainly seen Kickstarter projects fail at times). However, it's yet another example of how really committed and engaged fans can make things happen where the old gatekeepers stood in the way.

Filed Under: blue like jazz, donald miller, fan funding, funding, movies
Companies: kickstarter