If there's ever been a topic that has warranted more than one post here on Freddy In Space, it's that of the future of Leslie Vernon, something that I have now blogged about several times in the past several months. To make a long story short, the makers of the incredible horror film Behind The Mask want to make a follow-up to the film, continuing the adventures of Leslie, but they simply do not have the money available to them to do so. With no studio for whatever reason willing to fund the sequel to one of the better horror films in recent years (yep...go figure...), the fate of the movie has been hanging in the balance for the last year or so, whether or not it gets made totally being left in the hands of us fans.
Since June of last year, fans have been able to head over to the Before The Mask : The Return Of Leslie Vernon Facebook page, where several different donation options are available, nabbing you pre-orders of the DVD/Blu-ray once it's released and even walk-on roles in the film (one option even gets you killed on screen by Leslie!). In addition, a web-store was recently set up, selling special t-shirts and other merchandise to raise money for the cause.
Though a good deal of money has been raised through those outlets in the past several months, the deadline is still a ways off, and it's now nut up or shut up time for the Vernon-ites of the world. This movie is in our hands and it's at this point incredibly crucial that we help out if we truly want to see it in the near future. As of right now, the film is dangerously close to never seeing the light of the day.
Behind The Mask director Scott Glosserman and his crew just last night announced that a fundraising goal and deadline have been set. Here's a bit of what he had to say over on the Before The Mask Facebook page ...
We want to be shooting B4TM this fall. September, earliest, November, latest, to be exact. Therefore, we need to be in pre-production in August. Location scouting in July. Or before.
Our fundraising deadline for the crowd funding portion of B4TM is June 1st. If we achieve our goal by June 1st, we'll have enough time to close the other co-financing deals that are contingent upon securing our crowd funding.
As I am in the Directors Guild and our actors and writer, cinematographer, composer, et al, are in their respective guilds, this will be a union movie paying union scale wages and fringes. We will happily reveal the budget -- in fact, we are in discussions with a horror channel about doing a docu-reality series on the making of B4TM so that we can reveal what's involved in this production endeavor, every step of the way.
We shot our first movie for $232 thousand dollars (not including cast and post production/delivery). This movie will cost significantly more since we're all union now, and since we're deconstructing the conventions of horror sequels, prequels, and remakes, and you know how much...crazier...they tend to get.
Our crowd fundraising goal is $500 thousand dollars.
We have an investor(s) who is matching, dollar-for-dollar, up to that amount, so if/when we crowd fund $500K we'll actually have raised $1 million for B4TM. That will be enough to make our movie.
$500K by June 1st may seem like a daunting proposition, but spread out among the community we've already built, it's not crazy.
________________________________________
And that's that. If we don't raise the $500,000 needed to make the movie, Leslie Vernon will simply stay dead and it will never make its way in front of the camera. That is what it has come down to. It's a sad and scary truth but remember, this is all IN OUR HANDS.
Us horror fans complain all the time about remakes and crappy movies. We demand quality material, which we so rarely seem to get. We're hungry for good horror movies and here we are presented with the chance to actually play a huge part in making one. A chance to show our support for the people who gave to us a movie we love and give back to them just a small amount of money from each of our pockets to help them give to us something we crave. They want to make it and if you've read this far into this post chances are pretty damn good that you desperately want to see it, so RIGHT NOW is the time to take action and help bring Leslie Vernon back from the dead.
Again, you can head over to the Before The Mask Facebook page and donate money to get everything from DVD's to signed posters to roles in the film, and you can also check out the official web-store to score yourself some other goodies, including t-shirts, posters and a signed copy of the soundtrack CD. No matter how much (or how little) you choose to donate, you're not only giving life blood to Leslie Vernon, but you're also scoring yourself some awesome little treats, so there's really no reason for any Behind The Mask fan to turn a cold shoulder to this one. It is so important that you do not.
In quick summation, we need to raise a heck of a lot of money by this coming June or Before The Mask will never get made. It's a daunting task but if we all band together and send out as little as 20 bucks to the cause, that goal can pretty quickly and easily become a reality. Without us, it simply never will.
Stay tuned next week for some exciting announcements and tidbits, which you will hear about first right here on Freddy In Space!
0 comments:
Post a Comment