Zach Braff's Contentious Movie Kickstarter Closes With $3.1M

It turns out Zach Braff will be making his new film exactly the way he wants to make it, thanks to your contributions.

The actor, director, and writer caught flack last month when he took to Kickstarter to crowd-fund his Garden State follow-up. But despite the Hollywood backlash, Braff managed to successfully meet his funding goal, and even surpassed it by $1.1 million to land at just over $3.1 million.

"I was about to sign a typical financing deal in order to get the money to make Wish I Was Here," Braff wrote on his project's Kickstarter page. "It would have involved making a lot of sacrifices I think would have ultimately hurt the film."

From day one of his campaign, the independent movie star expressed concern that traditional funding routes meant agreeing to compromises in terms of his creative direction. So instead, he turned to Kickstarter to raise money.

Braff is no stranger to the crowd-funding site, having contributed to 13 Kickstarter projects already. But he didn't expect the concept to have the same effect in a large-scale situation, like making a multi-million-dollar movie. But once Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell rallied fans and broke basically every Kickstarter record in an effort to make a movie version of the decade-old Veronica Mars TV series, Braff was officially in.

"I couldn't help but think (like I'm sure so many other independent filmmakers did) maybe there is a new way to finance smaller, personal films that didn't involve signing away all your artistic control," his Kickstarter page said.

In 24 hours, the Wish I Was Here project raised $1.5 million of its $2 million goal. By the May 24 cut off, the final tally came to $3,105,473, thanks to 46,520 backers.

The film tells the story of Aidan Bloom (Braff), a 35-year-old struggling actor, father, and husband still trying to find himself. Bloom escapes from the daily grind by "fantasizing about being the great futuristic Space-Knight he'd always dreamed he'd be as a little kid," according to the actor, who wrote the script with his novelist brother, Adam.

To commemorate the final day of funding, Braff on Friday tweeted an excited photo of himself from the front seat of a car, writing, "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I won't let you down! Let's do this."

Check out some early Wish I Was Here concept art in Braff's first behind-the-scenes video below.

Kickstarter, meanwhile, announced today that it has officially launched more than 100,000 projects. "It's official! Over 100K projects have launched on Kickstarter. Can't wait to see what comes next!" the company tweeted. Fans have pledged $535 million towards successful projects (and $68 million towards unsuccessful ones) for a success rate of about 43.96 percent, Kickstarter said on its stats page.

For more, see Why 2013 Is the Best Time To Be a Fangirl and Kickstarter Co-Founder Talks Up Veronica Mars, Crowd-Funding Zeitgeist.