Zach Braff Defends Kickstarter Campaign For New Film

Zach Braff has answered his critics regarding his decision to use the crowd-funding platform Kickstarter to fund his next film. Put simply, he turned to the site because he doesn’t have “Oprah Winfrey money.”

In the spirit of the wildly successful Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign, the former Scrubs star turned to the site (as have many others) to fund his next film. The film will be titled Wish I WasHere and is said to be a follow-up to Braff’s successful directorial debut Garden State, which has become a cult film since its 2004 release.

Though Braff reached his $2 million goal in just four days (with donations continuing to pour in), some critics have wondered why someone so successful would need to turn to a crowd-funding source like Kickstarter instead of going through the usual film production channels.

For The Atlantic, Richard Lawson writes that “we have become firmly ensconced in a time when even the rich and famous can hold out their hats and ask the fine people of the Internet to finance their projects,” and that “it just downright seems crazy to me to pay so much for something that doesn’t exist just because some celebrity asked me to.”

But Braff has shrugged off his critics, telling the Los Angeles Times: “People seem to think I have Oprah Winfrey money. I’ve done well in my career, but I am not sitting on $22 million.”

“People who don’t like what I’m doing, that’s fine. That’s the great thing about crowd-sourcing: It’s very pragmatic. You’re into it or you’re not. There are obviously a lot of people who like the idea and will support it. I feel like we’ve all joined this little club and we’re going to make a movie together.”

What do you think? Should Zach Braff have to rely on crowd-funding platforms like Kickstarter to get his film project off the ground?

[Image via: Sam Aronov / Shutterstock.com]