Erik Ackerman

Kickstarting a Movie

Jun 23, 2015

I think there’s a common misconception when someone decides to Kickstart a movie. They expect the fact that they had a million backers to mean that a million people will go see the movie. Since the backer rewards usually include access to the movie via digital download or DVD, you have to recognize that your core audience will probably not go to the theater. Sure some hardcore fans will, but not enough to ensure box_office_success.

This came up in a recent TWiT episode where they observed that Veronica Mars raised 5.7 million, but only grossed about 3 million. Of the 90,000 backers, only about 20,000 didn’t get the movie from the Kickstarter campaign. So for 70,000 backers their money was taken on Kickstarter rather than at the box office. Not really shocking.