Crowdsourcing! Once the only method available for people like Zach Braff and plucky teen detective Veronica Mars to make movies, now even regular folks can ask the public for money if they want to make a movie. OK, that’s been happening for a long time, but it’s a little more unusual when one of these non-celebrity crowdfunding projects actually breaks a record for how much money it pulls in.
As reported by The Wrap, indie sci-fi comedy Lazer Team is now Indiegogo’s most successful film-funding campaign ever. Lazer Team collected almost $2.5 million over the course of its campaign, well over its goal of $650,000. The Wrap points out that Indiegogo’s previous record holder was a film about Kermit Gosnell, a doctor convicted of committing a number of illegal late-term abortions in 2011.
That’s obviously a big downer, so let’s move on and talk about Lazer Team. It’s going to be a live-action sci-fi comedy about how the United States government handles a mysterious alien transmission that it received in the 1970s. The movie is being made by Rooster Teeth, a group that is most well-known for creating Red Vs. Blue, a surprisingly popular and long-running series of comedy videos made with various Halo video games.
The Rooster Teeth team is going to start working on the film in August, and it is hoping for some kind of theatrical release. They will reportedly use the extra money “to increase the quality of the film,” which seems like a solid plan.