4 ms·

Why wouldn't it come close? 38 K people just raised $2 MM in 12 hours. I think you're thinking about this all wrong. I'd pay $10 to watch a new episode of Sh

Why wouldn't it come close? 38 K people just raised $2 MM in 12 hours. I think you're thinking about this all wrong. I'd pay $10 to watch a new episode of Sherlock right now. Even if I have to wait 6 months for production. They can have $100, if I get 10 episodes. And if you can ONLY get episodes by paying for it, I think it'd scale.

potatolicious 14y ago
38K people just raised $2MM in 12 hours after waiting literally years for one of their favorite series to come back in some form. There's a difference between exploiting this pent up demand in a one-off, and trying to fund a long-term regular series at that kind of cost. You might be able to get $10MM to produce said Harry Potter show, but I don't think the support base is there to repeat it week over week over week. At a lower budget level, definitely.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  You'd raise it a season at a time. $150 million this year, $150 million next year. I think this could very easily be done directly from the fans. The main obstacle in the case of something like Harry Potter would be that big funding sources would be stumbling over themselves to fund it anyway. Somewhere in there, there's a crossover point to where the venture's profitability is obvious even to those not interested in the content.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    Right, except what are the odds we can raise $150 million a year, consistently, year over year? My point is that the price that people are willing to pay for content decreases as you create more content. People might be willing to pay $50 to revive a movie from a long-dormant property, but would they pay the same $50 for the equivalent amount (2-3 episodes?) of a regular-run show? My bet is on no, at least for now - this may change in the future. This applies to more than just shows IMO - Chris Roberts (of Wing Commander fame) was able to raise a tremendous amount of money for his revival of the space sim genre - would he be able to raise even close to that amount if he went by, say, a yearly release?
    - VikingCoder 14y ago
      I don't agree that people are willing to pay less over time. Even if they did, that's EACH person you're talking about - if the content is popular, its base of consumers has gone up dramatically. If you double your viewers, but each is willing to contribute 40% less, that's still a net gain.
batiudrami 14y ago
Sure, it's made $2M in it's first day. It'll likely top out at about $7-10M, because that's how Kickstarter projects which receive early publicity go in terms of growth - they receive about 1/3 of their total funding in the first 24 hours - see below. $10M doesn't create a TV show. It certainly isn't going to create a movie with well know actors like Veronica Mars - there are definitely other parties kicking in for this. [1] http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console#chart-daily http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-vid... [2] http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/#chart-daily http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/#... [3] http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/#chart-daily http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/#chart-d...
- objclxt 14y ago
  > $10M doesn't create a TV show. It certainly isn't going to create a movie with well know actors like Veronica Mars ...I somewhat disagree. If you're financing a film of an existing property with a lot of goodwill around it (i.e, Veronica Mars), with a short shooting period (2-3 weeks, which is what they're talking about here), then you'll probably be able to get your cast to work at union rates along with points/profit participation. US TV tends to be on the expensive side, but that doesn't mean you can't produce quality TV for less. In the UK the BBC tends to budget around $750,000-$1,000,000 per episode for prime-time drama, which gives you a good ten episode season for your $10 million.
  - epmatsw 14y ago
    I don't know how accurate this [1] is (because the citation link is dead), but Wikipedia claims Veronica Mars cost about $1.7 million per episode ($2.1 million for the Season 1 finale). Each episode is 1 hour, so double that, and you assume that the movie would cost about $4.2 million if it had the same quality as the show. And that's not even taking into account that the director and Kristen Bell probably will do the work for less since it seems to be a pet project of theirs. Overall, it seems like it'd be really easy to make back the investment on this one. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver_%28Veronica_Mars%29#cite_note-beaverprod-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver_%28Veronica...

potatolicious 14y ago

38K people just raised $2MM in 12 hours after waiting literally years for one of their favorite series to come back in some form. There's a difference between exploiting this pent up demand in a one-off, and trying to fund a long-term regular series at that kind of cost. You might be able to get $10MM to produce said Harry Potter show, but I don't think the support base is there to repeat it week over week over week. At a lower budget level, definitely.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
You'd raise it a season at a time. $150 million this year, $150 million next year. I think this could very easily be done directly from the fans. The main obstacle in the case of something like Harry Potter would be that big funding sources would be stumbling over themselves to fund it anyway. Somewhere in there, there's a crossover point to where the venture's profitability is obvious even to those not interested in the content.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Right, except what are the odds we can raise $150 million a year, consistently, year over year? My point is that the price that people are willing to pay for content decreases as you create more content. People might be willing to pay $50 to revive a movie from a long-dormant property, but would they pay the same $50 for the equivalent amount (2-3 episodes?) of a regular-run show? My bet is on no, at least for now - this may change in the future. This applies to more than just shows IMO - Chris Roberts (of Wing Commander fame) was able to raise a tremendous amount of money for his revival of the space sim genre - would he be able to raise even close to that amount if he went by, say, a yearly release?
  - VikingCoder 14y ago
    I don't agree that people are willing to pay less over time. Even if they did, that's EACH person you're talking about - if the content is popular, its base of consumers has gone up dramatically. If you double your viewers, but each is willing to contribute 40% less, that's still a net gain.

batiudrami 14y ago

Sure, it's made $2M in it's first day. It'll likely top out at about $7-10M, because that's how Kickstarter projects which receive early publicity go in terms of growth - they receive about 1/3 of their total funding in the first 24 hours - see below. $10M doesn't create a TV show. It certainly isn't going to create a movie with well know actors like Veronica Mars - there are definitely other parties kicking in for this. [1] http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console#chart-daily http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-vid... [2] http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/#chart-daily http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/#... [3] http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/#chart-daily http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/#chart-d...

objclxt 14y ago
> $10M doesn't create a TV show. It certainly isn't going to create a movie with well know actors like Veronica Mars ...I somewhat disagree. If you're financing a film of an existing property with a lot of goodwill around it (i.e, Veronica Mars), with a short shooting period (2-3 weeks, which is what they're talking about here), then you'll probably be able to get your cast to work at union rates along with points/profit participation. US TV tends to be on the expensive side, but that doesn't mean you can't produce quality TV for less. In the UK the BBC tends to budget around $750,000-$1,000,000 per episode for prime-time drama, which gives you a good ten episode season for your $10 million.
- epmatsw 14y ago
  I don't know how accurate this [1] is (because the citation link is dead), but Wikipedia claims Veronica Mars cost about $1.7 million per episode ($2.1 million for the Season 1 finale). Each episode is 1 hour, so double that, and you assume that the movie would cost about $4.2 million if it had the same quality as the show. And that's not even taking into account that the director and Kristen Bell probably will do the work for less since it seems to be a pet project of theirs. Overall, it seems like it'd be really easy to make back the investment on this one. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver_%28Veronica_Mars%29#cite_note-beaverprod-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver_%28Veronica...