https://www.polygon.com/felicia-day-guild-movie-kickstarter/
https://archive.ph/wH8Uy
'We have the whole original cast back, and we had a reading just the other day. I almost cried.'
Felicia Day doesn’t often repeat herself. She’s best known for roles in fandom-favorite shows like Supernatural, Eureka, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but as an actor, producer, writer, showrunner, streamer, podcaster, and author, she’s jumped from project to project and medium to medium. Her latest release is her first graphic novel, The Lost Daughter of Sparta, a fantasy built around a virtually unknown character from Greek myth.
But as she’s touring behind that book, she’s also gearing up for a rare project revisiting her past: a 20-years-later movie spin-off of her wildly popular geeky 2007-2013 web series The Guild.
Actual-play streaming series like Critical Role and Dimension 20 are the big news in tabletop RPG streaming content these days, but neither could have existed without The Guild. (That’s particularly true for Critical Role, which originally launched on Day’s Geek and Sundry streaming channel.) The Guild was an early pioneer and proof of concept in several arenas — online web series, gamer-centric media, and fan-funded content — and its breakout success paved the way for a lot of the gaming-based entertainment that’s followed.
Day wrote and produced The Guild, and starred as Codex, aka Cyd Sherman, one of a group of players in a World of Warcraft-style MMORPG whose lives get messy when their guild members start meeting up offline. The show racked up more than 300 million views over its six seasons, and spun off into comics, an album, music videos, and online specials. Now, Day is planning a reunion movie, set for a Kickstarter launch this summer.
“We have the whole original cast back, and we had a reading just the other day,” Day tells Polygon. “I almost cried. It was so great to see people reading [in] their character voices. And we started bickering exactly like we did the last time we were together shooting. So it's exactly what I think people who love The Guild would like. I'm excited.”
Day declined to give any details on the movie’s plot: “I'm not going to spoil it. I will have a lot more to say about it,” she says. “I'm going to be announcing the Kickstarter in a couple of weeks, and it's going to be up this summer. And then hopefully we shoot it. Our 20th anniversary is next
With Dimension 20 selling out Madison Square Garden and Critical Role spawning two different animated series so far, it’s possible Day might have been able to fund and make a Guild movie through a mainstream studio. But she says that option was never interesting to her.
“I know very well that the story I want to tell — I don't think a lot of people want to fund it, and they might want to change it for reasons I don't particularly agree with,” she says. “To have that independent freedom that I had in all the other seasons I did, it's really important to me. And I would rather the fans be a part of this. That's what's special about The Guild.”
Day says that when she works in other forms of entertainment, she misses the “authenticity” of the connection she has with fans on crowdfunded projects.
“There's such a barrier and falseness,” she says. “It's like this glass wall between us as viewers. I mean, it is literally a screen, right? But I think when you can break that barrier and make an audience member feel like you're part of a family — I see that in a lot of the shows I've been on, Buffy, Eureka, Supernatural, the kind of shows they don't make right now, and I feel like it's a really sad thing. When I meet a fan who comes up to me and says, ‘Codex meant a lot to me, I really love being a gamer, [and after watching The Guild], I wasn't afraid to be a gamer,’ when I see a girl come up to me and say that Charlie from Supernatural made her come out to her parents, when I see a girl got a science-based degree because of Holly [Marten, a rocket scientist on Eureka], this means something. “
Day says she’s pitched “so many things” to film and TV studios in the past, but the kinds of stories she likes telling “don't resonate with that business” — and she’s fine with that.
“I'm reviving The Guild to make a movie because it's going to be on my terms, hopefully,” she says. “[Crowdfunding and writing for existing Guild fans] means the fans think they're a part of the world, and that's more important to me in what I make, because I don't want to be alone — I want to make things with and for the people who love them. So I'm very excited to do a Kickstarter, and we'll see what happens. I have a story I want to tell, and I'll make it in whatever format I can make it in.”
No date has been set yet for the project launch, and Day says the version of the script from the initial table read is still being tweaked. “I'll be working on it, but I'm really excited about the direction it's going,” she says. “After my book tour, I will be all Guild, all the time.”
https://archive.ph/wH8Uy
Felicia Day doesn’t often repeat herself. She’s best known for roles in fandom-favorite shows like Supernatural, Eureka, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but as an actor, producer, writer, showrunner, streamer, podcaster, and author, she’s jumped from project to project and medium to medium. Her latest release is her first graphic novel, The Lost Daughter of Sparta, a fantasy built around a virtually unknown character from Greek myth.
But as she’s touring behind that book, she’s also gearing up for a rare project revisiting her past: a 20-years-later movie spin-off of her wildly popular geeky 2007-2013 web series The Guild.
Actual-play streaming series like Critical Role and Dimension 20 are the big news in tabletop RPG streaming content these days, but neither could have existed without The Guild. (That’s particularly true for Critical Role, which originally launched on Day’s Geek and Sundry streaming channel.) The Guild was an early pioneer and proof of concept in several arenas — online web series, gamer-centric media, and fan-funded content — and its breakout success paved the way for a lot of the gaming-based entertainment that’s followed.
Day wrote and produced The Guild, and starred as Codex, aka Cyd Sherman, one of a group of players in a World of Warcraft-style MMORPG whose lives get messy when their guild members start meeting up offline. The show racked up more than 300 million views over its six seasons, and spun off into comics, an album, music videos, and online specials. Now, Day is planning a reunion movie, set for a Kickstarter launch this summer.
“We have the whole original cast back, and we had a reading just the other day,” Day tells Polygon. “I almost cried. It was so great to see people reading [in] their character voices. And we started bickering exactly like we did the last time we were together shooting. So it's exactly what I think people who love The Guild would like. I'm excited.”
Day declined to give any details on the movie’s plot: “I'm not going to spoil it. I will have a lot more to say about it,” she says. “I'm going to be announcing the Kickstarter in a couple of weeks, and it's going to be up this summer. And then hopefully we shoot it. Our 20th anniversary is next
“I know very well that the story I want to tell — I don't think a lot of people want to fund it, and they might want to change it for reasons I don't particularly agree with,” she says. “To have that independent freedom that I had in all the other seasons I did, it's really important to me. And I would rather the fans be a part of this. That's what's special about The Guild.”
Day says that when she works in other forms of entertainment, she misses the “authenticity” of the connection she has with fans on crowdfunded projects.
“There's such a barrier and falseness,” she says. “It's like this glass wall between us as viewers. I mean, it is literally a screen, right? But I think when you can break that barrier and make an audience member feel like you're part of a family — I see that in a lot of the shows I've been on, Buffy, Eureka, Supernatural, the kind of shows they don't make right now, and I feel like it's a really sad thing. When I meet a fan who comes up to me and says, ‘Codex meant a lot to me, I really love being a gamer, [and after watching The Guild], I wasn't afraid to be a gamer,’ when I see a girl come up to me and say that Charlie from Supernatural made her come out to her parents, when I see a girl got a science-based degree because of Holly [Marten, a rocket scientist on Eureka], this means something. “
Day says she’s pitched “so many things” to film and TV studios in the past, but the kinds of stories she likes telling “don't resonate with that business” — and she’s fine with that.
“I'm reviving The Guild to make a movie because it's going to be on my terms, hopefully,” she says. “[Crowdfunding and writing for existing Guild fans] means the fans think they're a part of the world, and that's more important to me in what I make, because I don't want to be alone — I want to make things with and for the people who love them. So I'm very excited to do a Kickstarter, and we'll see what happens. I have a story I want to tell, and I'll make it in whatever format I can make it in.”
No date has been set yet for the project launch, and Day says the version of the script from the initial table read is still being tweaked. “I'll be working on it, but I'm really excited about the direction it's going,” she says. “After my book tour, I will be all Guild, all the time.”
