Popular Demand is a studio for the projects everyone else is sleeping on, the ones with a passionate and growing fanbase, but no greenlight. We get these projects funded and into theaters, on shelves, and in hands with the audience already in attendance.
Our goal is not to offer something for everyone, but everything for someone.
Somebody out there is absolutely obsessed with a show you’ve never heard of. Usually a lot of somebodies. Most of the industry can’t see them until the numbers come in, and by then a lot of great projects are already sitting on a shelf. We’d rather move first.
We sign on early and build the audience while the work gets made. By premiere night, the room is full of people who’ve been along for the entire ride. Creators stay in charge of their work. Distributors and theaters see real demand before they sign on. And fans get there first, which, if you’ve ever been a fan, is the whole point.
We’ve done this before. Our team was behind some of the biggest fan-funded campaigns in film and TV, including Veronica Mars, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and The Legend of Vox Machina. Those fans showed up. Turns out they usually do.
The “fan whisperer” who raised more than $40 million to bring back Veronica Mars, Reading Rainbow, Super Troopers, MST3K, and more. Former head of digital at Lucasfilm. Recognized by Fast Company as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business for “helping fans get more of what they want.”
Founding Partner. Currently turning Bloodborne and Death Stranding into animated features at Lyrical Animation, so please stop asking him for release dates. WGA writer behind Netflix’s Centaurworld and Seis Manos who thinks creators should get to keep the stuff they create.
Led engineering at Kickstarter, which means he has kept the lights on for more creative projects than most people will ever back. Now builds the tech behind Popular Demand, including our soon-to-be-announced platform solutions, specifically designed to serve both fans and creators.
Spent more than a decade at Kickstarter where he served as Chief Strategy Officer, so he has seen roughly every idea anyone has ever had. Has a Stanford law degree and chose entertainment anyway, which CNN apparently noticed when it named him one of its Top Risk Takers in Business.
Co-founded Fangirl Central with Amber, and once made a short film called The Day I Didn’t Meet One Direction, which tells you everything about her priorities. A screenwriter who has written animation for Netflix and Crunchyroll and worked in writers’ rooms for Spider-Verse and The Morning Show, she was taking fans seriously long before anyone paid her to.
Co-founded Fangirl Central with Amanda, and brought her entertainment journalism career full-circle as a featured One Direction historian in MTV’s Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands. Guided the magic of Hallmark to San Diego Comic-Con, helped get Jimmy Kimmel Live! staff to Brooklyn, and worked tours with the teams behind Harry Styles and Olivia Rodrigo.
Has run or advised hundreds of crowdfunding campaigns across comics, games, books, and animation, which is a truly alarming number of stretch goals. Came up at Oni Press, ran Breadpig, and has served so many terms on Kickstarter’s Community Advisory Council they should probably just give him a key.
Led the $11.3 million Kickstarter that took a bunch of voice actors playing D&D all the way to Prime Video, back when she was SVP of Marketing at Critical Role. Ran marketing for Nerdist, Geek & Sundry, and Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, and also worked at Machinima, back when YouTube was mostly cat videos.
FANS FIRST. THEN MAKE MAGIC.
We start with audiences that already exist and look for what they’ve been waiting for someone to make. Our creator and IP partners bring their communities with them, so we know who a project is for from day one.
A PITCH MEETING WITH THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN IT.
We design and run crowdfunding campaigns for film, TV, games, and publishing, from the first reward tier to the last-day push. Creators stay in charge of their work, and the people who want a project to exist get to help make it happen.
NOBODY GOES DARK.
Fans get realtime updates, early looks, and a way behind the scenes while the work comes together. The people who got a project started stay with it until it’s done.
COLLABORATION STARTS AT THE GREENLIGHT.
We start on day one and keep building straight through production, side by side with creators and IP partners. By release, there’s a community that’s been around for months, sometimes years. It belongs to the project, not to an ad budget.
OPENING NIGHT IS AN EVENT.
We take films to theaters in the cities where their audiences already are, and we turn premieres into nights the fans have been counting down to. Theaters get full rooms. Creators get a launch that actually feels like one.
ONE HIT IS A STARTING POINT.
A world with a devoted audience is worth building on. We help creators take theirs into games, comics, books, and collectibles, guided by what fans have told us they’d love more of.
