With Hollywood studios retreating from anything that’s not IP-driven, creators are finding a new path forward—and a more direct relationship with their audiences.
Image: Denis Rozhnovsky/Adobe Stock
Despite a triumphant world premiere at Cannes last May, the politically unsparing Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice was stuck in cinematic limbo. Distributors had snapped up rights in Canada, Japan, Germany, and several other countries, but after a cease-and-desist letter from Trump himself, domestic distributors opted to pass. Lacking any better options to promote the movie and prove public demand, The Apprentice team turned to Kickstarter.
The filmmakers’ campaign hit its $100,000 target in just 12 hours—and ultimately raised four times that amount. (The campaign eventually quadrupled it.) That grassroots support not only funded marketing and screening opportunities, it raised the film’s profile, helping it secure stateside distribution. The Apprentice went on to earn Oscar nods in February for stars Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong. It also proved how the public’s faith in a creative project can counterbalance Hollywood’s risk aversion—especially when Kickstarter is involved.
“The Apprentice campaign is a powerful example of how creators—even those with established platforms—are using Kickstarter not just to fund projects, but to secure agency over their work and forge more direct connections with their audience,” says Taylor K. Shaw, senior outreach lead of Kickstarter’s film division.
The leading crowdfunding platform for creative projects, Kickstarter has helped hundreds of thousands of creators raise a total of over $8.6 billion since its 2009 launch. It’s also proved to be a crucial resource for budding artists, some of whom have gone on to do major Hollywood films. (Directors Jeremy Saulnier and David F. Sandberg, for instance, both used the platform before making the Netflix hit Rebel Ridge and the superhero blockbuster Shazam, respectively.) Kickstarter projects have also collectively netted 19 Oscar nominations—including The Apprentice’s two—and four wins.
And now, in a post-pandemic, post-Double Strike landscape, in which major studios are reassessing their budgets and productions are down 40% from 2022, creators of all sorts are starting to see Kickstarter as a vital means of support.
That marks a major shift in the way creators view the platform. There was a time when crowdfunding tools like Kickstarter were primarily seen as a way for creators to get projects off the ground, not sustain careers. Directors Zach Braff and Rob Thomas received backlash when they used Kickstarter to fund their different projects in 2013, with some claiming they’d exploited their own fans’ loyalties in order to skirt typical funding challenges.
While crowdfunding a Marvel movie remains inconceivable in 2025—comic book movies are now among the only remaining films to still reliably receive studio backing—massive shifts in the entertainment industry have since flipped the script around other kinds of projects. In the age of streaming wars and fragmenting viewership, when some studios would rather ditch completed films for a tax write-off than possibly see them underperform, the challenges creators now face in making passion projects are too often insurmountable.
“Most filmmakers, both emerging and established, are being told that there is little to no funding available for their original ideas,” says Shaw, who works directly with creators to shape their Kickstarter campaigns. “They go from pitching everyone they know and getting lots of no’s, to having to decide if they want to create their film independently or not. Kickstarter is where they go when they can’t wait for a greenlight.”
But it’s not just the industry that has changed over the past decade—audiences’ perceptions of crowdfunding have evolved, too. Fans who understand the mechanics of Hollywood are more likely to view crowdfunding as a legitimate path for projects of any pedigree, and seem to understand that many creators are turning to their communities for support out of necessity—not convenience.
According to Shaw, the projects most likely to get funded on Kickstarter aren’t necessarily those with ultra-topical plotlines or with big names like Sebastian Stan attached. Rather, it’s those with a clear vision and a direct line to an engaged audience.
Creators with locked-in fan bases, like the hosts of Dungeons & Dragons podcast Critical Role, for instance, can handily bring an existing community to a Kickstarter campaign, as those hosts did with their TV series The Legend of Vox Machina, which raised over $11 million and eventually landed a distribution deal with Amazon Prime. (The show recently concluded its third season.)
As for what sort of film and TV projects will be getting funded on Kickstarter in the future, the platform is doubling down on a handful of genres in 2025.
“We’ve seen especially strong engagement around animation, horror and thriller, short films and comedy, where fan bases are incredibly passionate and communities around those projects tend to be especially active,” Shaw says. “Because those categories already have strong traction, we’re leaning in with more focused outreach and support to help those creators take full advantage of the momentum that exists.”
In the meantime, the platform is also supporting all creators who use it by continuing to evolve its arsenal of tools for planning and promoting campaigns and engaging backers. Most recently, Kickstarter rolled out an integrated set of pledge management tools that streamline the logistical processes creators go through after successfully funding projects—like collecting backer info, offering add-ons, and shipping out rewards—all directly through the Kickstarter platform.
The company also just launched a new feature called Pledge Over Time, which gives backers the option to split their pledge into four equal payments. Most Kickstarter campaigns offer different rewards for different sizes of contribution, and this latest feature allows cash-strapped fans to access higher-tier rewards for the projects they most want to see in the world.
By helping to provide what creators need and what fans want, at a volatile time in Hollywood, Kickstarter has emerged as a welcoming oasis of greenlights for creators of all stripes. As gatekeepers become increasingly reluctant to fund projects outside of well-established intellectual properties, the platform is redistributing the right to decide whether or not the show must go on.
