Veronica Mars Movie Confirmed - Funded by the Fans

Veronica Mars fans worldwide can now breathe a sigh of relief and rejoice upon hearing that their beloved show has finally been green-lit for a 2014 movie release. The news was confirmed on the evening of March 13th by the show’s creator, Rob Thomas, via his Twitter. Thomas said, “Hallelujah! It’s a green light my friends. I love you all, but particularly the donors among you.”

The cult TV show, Veronica Mars, began in 2004. It was set in the fictional town of Neptune, CA, and featured the main character Veronica (played by Kristen Bell), a 16 year old student who worked part time as a private investigator at her father's PI business and who often took on investigations brought to her by fellow students. The show ran for three seasons before being cancelled in 2007. It had never been considered a hit but still managed to gather a cult following over the years and had also been responsible for launching Bell's career.

A twelve minute pilot for season four was filmed – and appeared as an extra feature on the season three DVD – but was not picked up by Warners Bros. due to a decline in the show’s ratings. It was for this same reason that Warner Bros. had initially refused to fund the movie themselves as they weren't sure the show had garnered enough of an interest to spend the money on a big budget movie. However, over the years, Bell and Thomas remained relentless in their pursuit of one day making a movie version of the show – and this was how The Veronica Mars Movie Project was born.

On the morning of March 13th 2013, a five minute video was posted to a page dedicated to the fundraising campaign on the website Kickstarter. It featured several stars of the show (Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring, Enrico Colantoni, Ryan Hansen) hanging out at Bell’s house and comfortably slipping into their character’s individual personas while scheming ways to make the movie happen. It ends with Bell making the announcement: “This is our chance to make the Veronica Mars movie happen. If we reach the fundraising goal, we’ll shoot the movie this summer.” The goal was set at $2 million and a limit of 30 days. If the goal was met, Warners Bros. agreed to produce the movie and pay for the marketing, production and distribution themselves. The catch, however? If the funding fell short of the intended goal, the movie would not be made. But this proved to be no challenge to the fans, whatsoever, as the $2 million was raised only 10 hours after the campaign had officially begun.

As an added incentive to encourage people to donate, there were many fabulous rewards on offer to those who made donations of at least $10 or more. They ranged as little as behind-the-scenes updates, DVD copies of the movie, signed posters and phone recordings from a cast member of your choice, to much larger rewards such as spending a day on set, tickets to the premiere in Los Angeles, and even a speaking role in the movie which was limited to the one lucky person who chose to donate the maximum amount of $10,000.

Currently, the campaign has accumulated over $3.7 million but the donating doesn’t stop there. As was mentioned on the campaign’s page by Thomas, “The more money, the cooler the movie!” Or as Ryan Hansen so eloquently puts it, “That extra cash will be our car chase and nudity fund.”

So what are you waiting for, marshmallows? Get donating!