Netflix, Kickstarter and the future of the entertainment industry

So there have been some things the past few months that look like potential game changers in terms of how television and movies are produced and distributed. There's been some talk on other threads about House of Cards, Veronica Mars and Arrested Development as shows, but I thought it might be interesting to discuss how the Netflix and Kickstarter models work, or maybe if they are working.

With Netflix, the first big offering of self-produced content was a very good, but fairly standard "TV" series in House of Cards. Arrested Development is making more of an attempt to take full advantage of the differences in distributing an entire season at once. The episodes are designed that they can be watched in any order. If watching the Lucille episode makes you want to watch Buster's next, that's fine. If you love Tobias and need to see him first, fine. I'm interested to see how this works.

Yesterday's Veronica Mars/Kickstarter thing is interesting. You have to wonder if the novelty of it all played a roll in the overwhelming response and maybe we'll never see anything like this again. But what if we do? Is this now a system where we don't have to rely on studios to produce what they think we want or think we will buy? Is there a future where we as consumers can decide if we want to pay a little more to get exactly what we want? As Sepinwall pointed out, it would be much harder to raise money for a brand new idea people aren't already emotionally invested in.

And will we see every beloved show come back? Again, as Sepinwall wrote, Veronica Mars could do it because Kristen Bell can work it around her current show and after that any other cast members you get are pretty much gravy and most of them probably just want or need the work. But a show like Deadwood is different. Even if you can get Tim Olyphant between Justified seasons, you have to get him at a time when Ian McShane, Molly Parker, John Hawkes, W. Earl Brown and a long list of others are also available. Much more difficult.

And as cool as Rob Thomas and Co. seem to be about this whole thing, $2 million seemed reasonable, could it open a door to where somebody with a popular series could effectively hold fans hostage rather than deal with networks or studios?

 

Kickstarter is beyond genius. I read the EW story about the Veronica Mars movie yesterday and they were saying that anyone who gives $10 will get a PDF of the script, $25 will get you a shirt and $10K will get you a speaking part.

Tiger Vols might know this better than anyone, but I wonder if someone could use a speaking part in the movie to get their SAG card. I could see people doing it just to do that.