Kickstarters: celebrities asking fans for funds

When There’s a Monster in the Lake had a one-week run at Islington's Rosemary Branch Theatre this month, the buzz wasn’t about Tallulah Brown’s surreal exploration of dementia and loss. Instead, all eyes were on a member of the cast: one Cressida Bonas, aka Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend, making her London stage debut as a wolf guarding the way between two worlds. Cressy and her crew raised the £2,000 for the show with a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, asking the public to donate in return for rewards, including ‘a personalised poem from the devil, sent via email’ or ‘a lullaby sung to you over Skype’; £100 bought your name in the programme. But Cressida is far from the only famous face to get out the online begging bowl…

OWN GOAL

Louis Tomlinson

Louis’ beloved Doncaster Rovers have been going in only one direction recently: down. So the pop star, who once played for the South Yorkshire club’s reserve side, set up The Tomlinson Ryan Trust to buy a stake in the club and help get them into the Premier League — but rather than stump up all the cash himself, he asked fans for donations. Sadly it seems the Rovers don’t hold the same place in the nation’s hearts as they do in Louis’ — the campaign on Crowdfunder had raised less than half of the £2m target when it came to an end. But the fact that home games are suddenly packed with teenage girls hasn’t gone unnoticed by the team.

When July 2014

Goal £2m

Number of backers 514

Result £757,796

Added incentives Thank-you videos from Louis; the chance to be a club mascot; a photo with Louis; seats in a VIP box

SCRUBBING UP

Zach Braff

Despite having a hit under his belt with 2004’s indie drama Garden State, Braff struggled to get his next film funded because he wanted full creative control. His pet project, comedy drama Wish I Was Here (set for release this September) — which the Scrubs star wrote, directed and stars in — sees him play a struggling actor who starts homeschooling his children. The $2m Braff was after on Kickstarter is roughly equivalent to what he was paid for five and a half episodes of Scrubs.

When May 2013

Goal $2m

Number of backers 46,520

Biggest single donation $10,000

Result $3,105,473

Added incentives Hear the soundtrack before anyone else; art prints; premiere tickets; be a cast member with a line of dialogue

FIRST DANCE

Katherine Heigl

Planning a wedding can be stressful, but it’s nothing compared with scraping together enough cash to make a Hollywood movie about a lesbian wedding, especially when you want it soundtracked by the most expensive-to-license chart hits. In Jenny’s Wedding, ex-Grey’s Anatomy star and romcom perennial Heigl plays the daughter of two conventional parents who sparks family drama when she decides to marry her female partner. After filming finished, producers turned to Indiegogo to crowdfund the music royalties for the film’s soundtrack. But with the pitch falling short of its target, Jenny’s first dance might have to be to ‘Agadoo’ after all.

When April 2014

Goal $150,000

Number of backers 1,113

Biggest single donation $15,000

Result $96,691

Added incentives Jenny’s Wedding fridge magnets, coffee mugs, beanies; a signed wedding album featuring shots from the film; a wedding dress used in the film

STRANGE FOLK

Zosia and Clara Mamet

‘It just sort of happened,’ ran hipster banjo folk band The Cabin Sisters’ blasé Kickstarter pitch to fund a music video. The band belonged to Girls star Zosia and her sister Clara (star of US drama The Neighbors), who are the daughters of playwright David Mamet, so not exactly short of dosh. They pre-empted the cries of ‘pay for it yourself, you tightwads’ by claiming: ‘It is one of the greatest privileges a person could ask for, the ability to do what you love. This has become another opportunity for that privilege.’ After being ridiculed by the media, and with the campaign fund at less than ten per cent of the target, they pulled the plug out of sheer embarrassment.

When June 2013

Goal $32,000

Number of backers 80

Biggest single donation $100

Result $2,783

Added incentives T-shirts; vinyls; Skype sessions; a signed banjo

DOUBLE VISION

James Franco

Lambasting his fellow crowdfunder Zach Braff, Franco insisted that there was nothing in the least egotistical about his own project to adapt his short story collection Palo Alto: Stories into three separate feature films, each to be made by a different young director and paid for by his adoring public. There’s little news on the progress of these, despite having raised over $300,000 on Indiegogo, but confusingly another film based on the collection, Palo Alto, is now out in the US — this time directed by Hollywood royalty Gia Coppola and starring Franco himself.

When July 2013

Goal $500,000

Number of backers 1,138

Biggest single donation $5,000

Result $327,929

Added incentives Postcards; personalised phone messages from James; be an extra