$5.7 Million Kickstarter Campaign Resurrects ‘Veronica Mars’ on Big Screen

If you’ve been obsessing over what happened to “Veronica Mars,” the heroine of the neo-noir detective series played by Huntington Woods native Kristen Bell in her break-out role, the wait is almost over.

The series, which left viewers hanging on a cliff was abruptly canceled seven years ago, but now it’s returning on March 14, the Oakland Press reports.

This time, Bell will be on the big screen. The series originally aired on UPN, then became part of the CW Network, which canceled the series in 2007. Creator Rob Thomas wrote a screenplay, but Warner Bros., the network’s owners, said it wasn’t going to fund the movie.

“Veronica Mars” would have faded into obscurity without dedicated fans who sent 10,000 Mars bars to Warner Bros. in protest of the studio’s decision not to renew the series for a fourth season.

The real test of their allegiance to the series was support for a campaign to fund the movie on Kickstarter. The goal was $2 million, an amount exceeded in less than 10 hours. In all, $5.7 million was raised by 91,585 backers.

That level of support was enough to convince Warner Bros to plan a national release of the movie. Originally, a limited theatrical release followed by digital distribution and distribution through video-on-demand services was planned for “Veronica Mars.”

Beginning Jan. 13, the heroine of “Veronica Mars” can be seen on the new Pivot network along with the star of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in the “Buffy and Veronica Power Hours” block, beginning at 10 p.m.