The "Veronica Mars" movie, which raised a record $2 million in less than a day on Kickstarter, has earned a greenlight from Warner Bros., an individual with knowledge of the production told TheWrap.
The go-ahead from the studio comes roughly 24 hours after star Kristen Bell and creator Rob Thomas launched a Kickstarter campaign to solicit donations for a big-screen version of the cult CW show. The two set a $2 million fundraising goal, but as of Thursday afternoon, the project has surpassed that number and attracted more than $2.7 million in pledges from 45,665 donors.
The film's production budget will come entirely from the money it raised on Kickstarter and won't include any additional funding from the studio, the individual told TheWrap. Warner Bros. Digital Distribution will shoulder the cost of distributing the film and marketing it to the "Veronica Mars" faithful.
The project is a record-breaker when it comes to social media hat-holding. According to Kickstarter, the "Veronica Mars" movie fundraising campaign was the fastest project to reach $1 million dollars, having hit that mark 4 hours and 24 minutes after the page went live.
Of course, pledging is not the same thing as having cash-in-hand. However, the studio is confident that because the project has surpassed its $2 million goal, there will be more than enough financing available to make the picture.
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The percentages are on the filmmakers' side, as well. More than 98 percent of dollars pledged on Kickstarter are made good on, a spokesman for the site told TheWrap.
Bell and Thomas are planning to add more prizes to the film's Kickstarter campaign in order to attract additional donations, so the production team believes that the budget will continue to grow, the individual said.
The noirish "Veronica Mars" followed an aspiring private investigator through high school and later college as she was tutored in the art of deduction by her detective father. It was never a ratings blockbuster, but it did inspire a passionate following — something the intense response to the Kickstarter campaign demonstrated.
Thomas said on Kickstarter that the movie will be shot over the summer and post-production will happen in the fall. The film will get a limited theatrical release in 2014 before debuting on video-on-demand and electronic sell through.
