veronica-mars-550

If you ever doubted the power of the Internet, you’ll certainly become a believer now that fans of the cult TV series Veronica Mars have broken all kinds of funding records on Kickstarter.

The project, which as of press time has raised over $3.2 million, has broken new ground in the film industry by helping fans bypass the Hollywood machine. Series creator Rob Thomas chronicled all of the ways that the Veronica Mars Kickstarter rocked it.

We were the fastest Kickstarter project to hit $1M. We were the fastest Kickstarter project to hit $2M. We set the record for highest goal ever achieved. (Other KS projects have done better than us — so far — but none set a goal as high as our $2M goal.) We’re also the largest film project in Kickstarter history.

If you don’t remember Veronica Mars during its original run on UPN/The CW, here’s a brief synopsis.

Veronica, played by Kristen Bell, is a high school teenager who moonlights as a for-hire private detective for her fellow students at her high school, Neptune High. Her father, Keith Mars, is an actual private detective and she works for him part-time so she gets some of her best tricks in the book from her dad.

The series was sharp, dark, edgy and funny all at the same damn time. And it also, for some strange reason, gave Paris Hilton one of her first breaks as a “real” actor.

kristen-bell-paris-hilton

But ultimately, it fell victim to “bad ratings” and was cancelled in 2007. Thomas wrote the script for a movie that tied up all of the loose ends that he didn’t get to clean up since the series was cancelled years ago, but Warner Bros. passed on funding the film.

If you’re wondering what caused the resurgence in interest in Mars, we can thank Netflix for that. Because the streaming video company is limited in its selection, people hungry for content began looking back on TV shows like Mars that they missed in its original run

Before you know it, the series has gained a second wind. And it’s not totally without precedent either. Family Guy went unnoticed and was ultimately cancelled until it grew popular on P2P networks and DVD.

So with a brand-new fan base behind his creation, Thomas bravely rounded up some of the actors for this ambitious Kickstarter project. Well, that’s the romantic version of events. Warner Bros. likely challenged Thomas to prove that there was demand for a Mars movie and this is his way of proving that.

Here’s the project’s trailer nonetheless.

Now that the movie project has successfully been funded, fans can look forward to the movie being filmed this summer and released sometime in 2014. Power to the people.

Quick: Can someone convince Martin Lawrence ‘n’ them to do a Kickstarter for a Martin movie? It doesn’t even have to be a theatrical release. A made-for-BET movie would do.

Be the first to receive breaking news alerts and more stories like this by subscribing to our mailing list.