The slow bandwagon of celebrities funding films through Kickstarter gained another member this week in the form of notorious German director Uwe Boll, a filmmaker known for directing a series of terrible video game adaptations and for being ever so slightly crazy. In the wake of the upcoming Veronica Mars film and Zach Braff's indie comedy Wish I Was Here being funded through the crowdfunding website, Boll has set up a
Kickstarter campaign with a funding goal of $500,000 for a sequel to his 2007 film Postal, an action comedy based on the PC game of the same name. Boll's adaptation of the first Postal game was more based on Postal 2 and critiqued politics and relatively current affairs in a big way, including bird flu as a plot point and featuring George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden as characters. And it appears that the sequel to his Postal film will be in very much the same vein, with the Kickstarter page stating that the film will "take the biggest scandals of our democracy, like the happenings about Julien Assange and Edward Snowdon and show that there is no difference between our democracy and the prison camps in Russia or China." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4o0gUt76Mc For any other filmmaker, a sequel to Postal would be an odd move given that it received overwhelmingly negative reviews and only grossed $18 million on a $15 million budget but Uwe Boll isn't a normal filmmaker. His raging ego (at one point describing himself as "the only genius in the whole f***ing business.") and strange actions like challenging his critics to a boxing match (and winning it) show that he's the kind of man who won't let little things like common sense get in the way of making the films he wants. A trait which you have to admire even if he is the 21st century's answer to Ed Wood. He's already raised $10,000 so there's clearly at least a small market for a new Uwe Boll film. Or it could be that people just want to see the film crash and burn and consider helping to fund it a small price to pay. Boll says that "POSTAL 2 will finally destroy the filmindustry", and judging by his previous work, he might be right.
What do you think of Boll's plans for Postal 2? Leave a comment...