With old models of film financing models breaking down, a new generation of filmmakers is turning to the Internet for the cash and fan backing to produce and distribute their movies.
Whether it’s Kevin Smith tweeting his 1.7 million Twitter fans to support the roll-out of his horror outing Red State, Luc Besson’s EuropeCorp asking online users to vote on scripts and cast for its next project or Amazon paying $1.1 million in a contest to find the best user-generated feature, the film biz is tapping the power of the online crowd as it looks for a new way to bankroll independent features.
Iron Sky, the long-gestating Nazis-on-the-moon film from Finnish director Timo Vuorensola, raised $1.2 million of its $10 million budget from online fans. The project, which finished principal photography last week and is being shopped to buyers in Berlin by Blind Spot Pictures, mixed online and traditional financing in a way that could prove a model for future indies.
Producers Blind Spot first generated interest in their “space Nazis” movie by pitching the idea to fans of their Finnish-language sci-fi feature Star Wreck, which was released for free online and was seen by over 8 million people worldwide.
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