6 Celebrity Kickstarters That Failed In Hilarious Ways
Everywhere you look, there's plenty of success to be found on crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Unfortunately, failure too abounds -- which is always extra humiliating when the person behind a campaign is more famous than 99 percent of the people on the planet. Think about that. Some random nobody managed to get $55,000 for potato salad, and the following celebrities still failed miserably to reach their goals.
Unless, that is, that goal was secretly to be mocked in one of these articles. In which case, hey, congrats!
No One Wants To Pay For New Nicolas Cage And Kevin Sorbo God Movies
After God's Not Dead made roughly 30 times its budget at the box office and was thoroughly watched by critics, it seemed as if a sizable chunk of the viewing public had an appetite for overtly religious films after all. This did not escape the notice of Kevin Sorbo, who played Hercules in the '90s Hercules show, the asshole professor in God's Not Dead, and the asshole Kevin Sorbo in real life. Sorbo set up an Indiegogo campaign for a film called The Christmas Gift, a "politically incorrect" (in the lamest sense) movie which promised to "take back Christmas." You know, since those sinful heathens in Hollywood really hate that time of the year.
But despite the enticing promise of a movie about '90s Hercules heroically refusing to say "Happy Holidays," the campaign raised only $6,316 of its $250,000 goal. God may be alive, but Santa remains more popular.
Now we'll never know how they break the curse and escape those satanic ornaments.
Sorbo is not alone in trying to crowdfund the spreading of the Gospel, though. The producer of Left Behind, the shockingly un-entertaining Nicolas Cage adaptation of one of the most bugfuck end-of-days book series ever, tried to raise half a million dollars for an ill-conceived sequel that nobody asked for. How desperate was producer Paul Lalonde for funding? Well, if you gave $2,500 to the project, you could spend a day on set with the producer and really do some producing, giving advice as to how the film should be made. If that's too expensive, then for only $75, you could join an "advisory panel" of random jackasses that give input on the film's direction.
"Nic, do you have any more magical amulets? I'd like to see you festooned with more amulets."
Unsurprisingly, this campaign was also a flop, raising only $80,699 of its $500,000 goal. The movie has since resorted to soliciting funds on PayPal, and probably other things that the producer is not proud of. Meanwhile, Nicolas Cage ... is. He just is.
Sylvester Stallone Successfully Kickstarts A Film, Throws The Money Away
Now hold on a minute. Sylvester Stallone is still a legitimate movie star. He's written and directed great films, was recently nominated for an Academy Award, and still acts in big-budget AAA films to this day. How badly could he possibly screw up a Kickstarter campaign? Well, how about canceling his campaign after it was successfully funded, to make less money on another platform?
Yeah, that will do it.
The project in question was a film titled Reach Me. Stallone appears as a high-profile blogger (a profession which apparently exists in this movie universe) who likes to paint on the side. Coincidentally, that's a real-life hobby for Stallone. Also coincidentally, someone called Scarlet Stallone has a cameo in the film. And who contributed songs to the soundtrack? You guessed it:
Reportedly, Stallone's dog was in talks to play an important role.
In case you still had a bit of optimism for the film, the official trailer should hopefully take care of that. Bask in the subtlety of a man who needs guidance because he just can't stop murdering people all the time. This is a real plot point.
So wait, there's a trailer for the movie, which means it must have been funded, right? Well, yes and no. The film was originally pitched on Kickstarter, where it managed to meet its impressive goal of $250,000. But then, two days before the end of the campaign, Stallone cancelled the whole thing and moved the project to Indiegogo. Reportedly, he wanted to open the film up to both international donors and donations larger than $10,000 (because a reward of "golfing with Tom Sizemore" isn't enticing enough).
So after rejecting all the pledged Kickstarter money and going to Indiegogo, his project ended up with ... $178,640. Astute mathematicians will realize that this is about $80,000 less than the bare minimum he would have earned otherwise, but we guess if you play a boxer too many times, your math skills suffer a bit. Of course, a man with a net worth of $400 million makes whatever damn movie he wants, so Reach Me did get released, with the same reception as a particularly wet fart.
Looks like the world simply isn't yet ready for taut blogger drama.
Nu-Metal Band Orgy Crowdfunds A Glorious Comeback, Nobody Cares
Remember Orgy, that Korn-like band from the late '90s that did that one cover of "Blue Monday" and sold two million albums? No? What about their only other single to chart, "Stitches"? Or that song they did with the actual lead singer of Korn? Still nothing? Huh.
Anyway, want to help fund their next album?
215 of those 217 people thought this was a "best of Barry White" collection.
Back in 2013, an Indiegogo page went up to fund the creation of an EP from what could generously be called Orgy, since lead singer Jay Gordon was the only member of the band on board with the revival. If he was being accurate, the group would have been renamed "Single Masturbating Man." It seems the band's other original members were too busy palling around with Linkin Park and making music for two of the worst Sonic The Hedgehog games, which we're going to tepidly classify as a lateral move.
Backers could get such rewards as free albums, T-shirts, music lessons from members of the band, or a date with one of them (and the accompanying awkward story to share on Facebook later). Anyone who ponied up a massive $20,000 would be credited as a producer on the album and get a full day to hang out with the band. The location wasn't specified, but we're guessing it was "the nearest Carl's Jr."
"Wait, where are the naked chicks? Please tell me I didn't spend that money on a few sullen guys wearing eyeliner."
Somehow, no one scooped up these hot deals, and the campaign raised less than 10 percent of its target, which they accepted with the grace and humility of a 12-year-old who got headshotted in Call Of Duty. They griped on their Facebook page about the "jealous" and "childish haters" who had the audacity to report on their failure. Also, one of Gordon's parents showed up in the comments to defend him from the internet, but we're not making fun of that, because we've all been there.
The new EP did eventually come out, and it's ... pretty good? We're sure there's a lesson here somewhere, but we don't know what it is.
Corey Feldman Fails To Take Us On A Musical Journey
When we last saw Corey Feldman, he was inadvertently terrorizing a minor league baseball team. And despite being known for acting in every '80s movie ever, Feldman's recent Indiegogo campaign was about releasing his long-awaited musical album -- "long-awaited" by him, because he's been working on it for a decade, like Chinese Democracy, or Duke Nukem Forever, or some other thing people should have given up on. The album is called Elev8or 2 Ascension, and the whole campaign page is written in crazy Prince-speak:
"Why would Corey Feldman be asking for money?" -- a question nobody had
Terrible word crimes aside, what is this album about? According to Feldman, it is "a musical journey through all types of sounds from EDM to pop to rock to hip-hop ... It's literally a sound of the ages." Perks for helping the Feld-magic come true include being friended by Feldman on Facebook for $40 or followed by him on Twitter for $150, though he specifies that he'll delete you if you say anything negative to or about him. Or, for $10, you can make Feldman take a picture of himself doing anything you ask. Note that he felt the need to specify that he must be clothed in the picture.
Given the fact that he's been known to host orgies (not the band), this is somewhat surprising.
Unfortunately, the project only raised $14,982 out of $105,000. So what's a Corey to do? Try it again, of course! His second Indiegogo campaign, which had a much lower goal of $25,000, nonetheless failed as well, with not even half that amount raised. Though to be honest, it's a better result than what we got with Chinese Democracy.
At this point, we really hope that Feldman keeps at it until he achieves his dream of charting on the Billboard Top 40, because we want to live in a world where we can tell people that happened.
The hit '70s show Good Times has managed to stay culturally significant, if not culturally relevant, since it was cancelled 40 years ago -- which is impressive for a show that's a spinoff of a spinoff. And with shows such as Veronica Mars and Mystery Science Theater 3000 coming back to life through Kickstarter, the cast of the classic show followed suit.
How does James Jr. look 10 years older than James Sr.?
Five of the original actors (Jimmy Walker, John Amos, Ja'Net DuBois, Bern Nadette Stanis, and Ralph Carter) got together and launched a campaign to create a movie based on the old show. Their Kickstarter had a lofty goal of $1 million, but that's a fraction of what Veronica Mars managed to raise, so it seemed like an attainable goal, right? Uh, right?
*cough*
Nope. They didn't even manage to make 1 percent of their goal. It should be obvious where they went wrong. No one knows anything about Good Times anymore, with the exception of Seth MacFarlane, who has consumed every piece of pop culture since 1934. Even if a good number of young viewers did go to see the movie, they'd probably all get up and leave after the first time J.J. mispronounced the word "dynamite." Shows like Arrested Development and even The X-Files can be revived because they still have devoted fans who never got over their cancellation. Most people who watched Good Times have probably moved on by now (from this mortal coil, that is).
Donald Trump Fucking Bails On His Crowdfunding Platform
Donald Trump, as he loves to remind us, does everything bigger and better than everyone else (if by "bigger" you mean "louder," and "better" you mean "louder still"). So naturally, he was not content to simply set up a crowdfunding campaign and watch it fail. Nope, instead, he backed an entire crowdfunding platform, before sitting back and letting that fall apart.
"I couldn't hold it all, what with my comically tiny hands."
In early 2013, The Donald announced that he was throwing his support behind FundAnything, a crowdfunding site which, as the name subtly suggests, let people request crowdfunding for any kind of thing, from artistic endeavors to health care costs. Trump also pledged to tweet out some of his favorite projects on a weekly basis -- which shouldn't be too hard, since he accounts for roughly 7 percent of all the world's Twitter messages. Trump was convinced that the site would be the next big thing. After all, how could a project with the name "Trump" on it possibly fail?
Ultimately, FundAnything didn't take off in a major way, partially because Trump, unbelievably, failed to tweet. This is a man who sleepwalks to his computer at night to tweet out "Wall Hillary wall, SAD faaaaaaart" before shambling back to his bed, but he couldn't manage one tweet a week to support the crowdfunding business which proudly displayed his name. He ended up issuing only a handful of tweets and supporting a mere eight projects before losing interest, like a teenager who was tasked with cleaning the house but only rearranges a few magazines on the living room coffee table.
And then losing the magazine.
FundAnything is still around, and some of its projects are doing quite well. For instance, a Penn Gilette movie raised over a million dollars. Trump, however, is no longer associated with it, with him withdrawing his support and the "Donald's Picks" section being renamed to "Staff Picks." Best of luck to Don in his next crowdfunding venture: saving his financial clusterfuck of a presidential campaign (or, alternatively, the world economy).
When Jim Avery isn't throwing his money away on hopeless Kickstarter projects, he's tweeting out random crap on his Twitter account, or writing game news and reviews for GeekNifty.
Also check out 6 Spectacularly Embarrassing Celebrity Kickstarter Fails and The 5 Worst Kickstarter Ideas That Actually Got Funded.
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