I wrote about Broken Lizard’s Indiegogo campaign for Super Troopers 2 yesterday. The campaign came about because, according to Jay Chandrasekhar, “since we refused to write a sequel where the highway cops have morphed into super hero-vampires, Fox Searchlight proposed the following deal: they’ll release the film, but we have to raise all of the money.”
It only took them a day.
In just over 24 hours, comedy group Broken Lizard raised the $2 million it needed to hit the gas on Super Troopers 2.
With its Indiegogo campaign just launched on Tuesday morning, Broken Lizard is assured to make at least a “bare bones” version of the film, according to the filmmakers. With 31 bonus days of fundraising still to go, they could put a lot of meat on those bones.
When Veronica Mars [my review] launched its Kickstarter campaign in 2013 the goal was also $2 million for a green light. The film hit that number in a matter of hours, on the way to a final total of $5.7 million. [Mashable]
As I said yesterday, the Broken Lizard guys probably should’ve done this two years ago, and I’m sure they wish they would have. Yesterday’s post got 23,000 Facebook shares. How Fox Searchlight didn’t notice this phenomenon with virtually every crumb of potential Super Troopers sequel news I have no idea, but I guess now they get to have their cake and eat it too.
Of course, there will inevitably be people screaming that this money should’ve gone to someone unknown who had a really good idea, not to some cult-famous jerks who probably have lots of money and big swimming pools, just so they can rehash their old idea without having to stop buying organic food for their sharks or whatever. But look, this thing sat in development hell for years because the money people didn’t believe there was fan demand (it wasn’t because they didn’t think a Super Troopers sequel was a good idea, even though I’m inclined to agree…). So the Broken Lizard boys went straight to fans and proved there was demand. How is that a bad thing (and you aren’t allowed to use Zach Braff’s Kickstarter movie as an example)?
Yes, people with name recognition can raise more money through crowdfunding than the non-famous, and it doesn’t have that much to do with the merits of the idea. Is that unfair? …Uh, sure? To me that argument basically comes down to “Why do famous people get to be more famous than non-famous people!?” Seems to me that it’s kind of an if your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle situation.