Another Celeb Crowd Funded Flim Is Blowing Up On Kickstarter

Last month, the creative team behind VERONICA MARS took to Kickstarter to raise funds for a long-delayed and underfunded movie reboot of the franchise.  In a little over 48 hours they hit their goal and, by the end of one month, had raised nearly three times their goal of 2M. Well, now Zach Braff has taken to Kickstarter with a similar goal and will probably make that in just over 36 hours.

Braff's Kickstarter debuted yesterday to a rush of donors and now has more than 1.7 million of it's 2 million goal. Braff is raising money for a quasi-sequel to his popular generational film GARDEN STATE, which has different characters involved but dealing with challenges of life in their 30s rather than their 20s. His Kickstarter video (like the one for VERONICA MARS) has some star power too with cames by his SCRUBS co-star Donald Faison and friend Jim Parsons. Some are deriding the fact that these sort of celebrity fundraisers are "ruining" Kickstarter but to me that sounds like sour grapes. It's a crowd-sourcing platform and if, as a celeb, you already have a crowd then why shouldn't they be able to tap into it too?  It seems to be what the site was built for.

The real proof, however, will be in the product when both these films come out sometime next year. Will they be better than if a studio had produced them, leaving final cut to the producers and not the creators? We'll find out streaming on iTunes next summer.