Movie Producers Ask Chinese Video Game Pirates If They Can Make An Official Version Of The Game

from the embracing-the-infringers dept

Sheri Candler points us to this fascinating story, where the Finnish producers of a "sci-fi Nazis-on-the-moon spoof" movie called Iron Sky have decided to try to work with a Chinese company who turned the movie into an unauthorized "pirate" video game for the iPad, to see if they could turn it into the official version of the game.

Rather than sue the company, "Iron Sky" creators are now in talks with Ziiso to make a legitimate iPad game.

"The people at Ziiso apologized to the 'Iron Sky' team in an interview conducted by the largest newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat," said "Iron Sky" director Timo Vuorensola.

"The apology and Ziiso's willingness to correct their error convinced me that we could co-operate with them on the game project. We are currently negotiating with Ziiso about revamping the game and publishing it as part of the official 'Iron Sky' merchandise."

Of course, we've talked about the Iron Sky producers in the past, and their history suggests that they're really open to embracing such things, rather than freaking out about them. They're the same folks who created the amazing Star Wreck film years ago for free. They then turned the massive success of that into Iron Sky, which was funded with $10 million in a hybrid funding model that combined some traditional financing along with a ton of fan support by allowing fans to buy "War Bonds" to crowdfund part of the movie.

These are clearly folks who always look to embrace what people out there want... rather than freak out and try to block others.

Filed Under: business models, china, embrace, iron sky, movies, video games

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.

Filed Under: business models, fan funding, films, iron sky, star wreck

Star Wreck Filmmakers Experiment With Iron Sky

from the making-movies-for-under-$200M dept

BullJustin points out to us that the guys behind Star Wreck (which we wrote about back in 2006) are trying a few interesting things to promote their follow-up movie project Iron Sky -- a story about Nazis who fled to the moon in 1945 with plans to return to Earth in 2018. To connect with fans, the Iron Sky project released some Creative Commons material for a movie teaser remix and is selling "War Bonds" to crowdfund part of the movie production. To be clear, the "War Bonds" aren't actually bonds -- just a limited-edition package (only 2,000) of keepsakes that includes:

• a 16-page book with very pretty pictures
• a DVD with the teaser trailer and two documentaries
• a signed certificate of support
• official dogtags
• undying gratitude

There are about 1,760 war bonds still available at 50€ a piece. Though, you can get some of the items separately from the Iron Sky online store (undying gratitude is presumably included in all purchases).

With only 240 war bonds sold since August 2008, the Iron Sky movie isn't going to be completely funded by fans. But it looks like the British Stealth Media Group has chipped in up to 1 million euros for worldwide distribution rights -- and the movie's total budget has grown to be at least 5 million euros. On top of that, the Star Wreck folks seem to have even bigger plans -- with a separate Iron Sky game project called Iron Sky: Operation Highjump that is looking for contributions/suggestions from fans to create a single-player video game based on the movie's background story. All of which is based on the WreckAMovie community that encourages more films to be bootstrapped and crowdsourced from a collection of both amateur and professional filmmakers.

So for much less than $200 million, the Star Wreck crew is developing creative ways to interact with their fans (and other filmmakers) to get their projects accomplished more cost effectively. They've given away free promotional materials for fan remixing. They've set up a process for fans to donate ideas and money to the project. They're creating movie accessories that get an audience excited about a movie that hasn't even been made yet. Shouldn't this be the way more movies are produced?

Filed Under: cwf, films, iron sky, rtb, star wreck, war bonds