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Kickstarter was founded in 2009 with a specific intention. The goal was to provide potential creators with a new avenue for financing. The traditional sources for capital investment had always been cautious with their outlays. The premise as stated by Kickstarter founder Perry Chen was to give everyday consumers a chance to vote with their wallets before a product actually existed. This form of meritocracy would provide potential businesses with the resources to fund everything including prototypes as long as the concept was popular.

What is Kickstarter? It is a social media society wherein people post their ideas for business ventures. Consumers who welcome the idea can donate money via Amazon Payments to support the entrepreneur. The bidding is structured in a way that people are not billed unless the project reaches its financial goal. There is a tiered level of support that rewards those who participate to larger degrees. In this manner, the more ardent backers get better prizes. They do not, however, receive any future revenues from the project, assuming it ever makes money.

Willing to try anything if it had even the slimmest margin of success, Thomas approached Warner Bros. with an unusual proposition. The Warner Bros. Home Video team almost exclusively handles straight-to-video releases. Thomas had something else in mind. He asked if they would be willing to back a Veronica Mars movie production if he could acquire $2 million in funding via this new resource, Kickstarter. Presumably, the company executives said yes because they had little cause to believe that such a project would be funded within 30 days. Asking movie fans to provide $2 million worth of money for a theatrical adaptation of a barely watched series must have sounded crazy.

On March 13, 2013, Thomas, Bell and several cast members from the television show participated in a video that was displayed on the Kickstarter page. It announced the grand intentions of the Veronica Mars film. If fans voted loudly enough with their wallets, a Veronica Mars movie would become a reality. Four hours and 24 minutes later, the project became the fastest Kickstarter campaign to reach a million dollars. Yes, the project reached the halfway point in its goal before people on the West Coast ate lunch.

Thomas’ desperate play proved successful beyond his wildest dreams. Approximately six hours later, the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign had fully funded. Over the course of 30 days, a project that had seemed unlikely to reach $2 million had gained $5.7 million, almost tripling the listed goal. The consumers were rewarded for their loyalty with incentives such as free DVDs of the yet to be filmed movie. What they really wanted is something that they have yet to receive, which is the movie itself.

Almost exactly 12 months after the Kickstarter for Veronica Mars, the film will be released in March of 2014. Whether it becomes a box office hit or not borders on irrelevant. Warner Bros. have invested no money of their own thus far although they will foot the bill for the marketing campaign. Instead, potential consumers paid for everything. In exchange for this gift, Thomas promised to put every dollar of the $5.7 million into the production, something he technically isn’t even required to do. Investing in a Kickstarter project is always a leap of faith in this regard.

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