Jen Johans launches Kickstarter for THE VERONICA MARS BOOK PROJECT

Marshmallows, get your wallets ready — there's a new Veronica Mars project to back, and this one's a book.

Film critic Jen Johans, known online as @filmintuition, has launched The Veronica Mars Book Project on Kickstarter, a "lovingly researched, behind-the-scenes oral history and companion" to the show that turned a canceled teen-noir into a fandom-powered franchise. The campaign went live this week at www.kickstarter.com/projects/watchwithjen/veronica-mars-book-project.

Johans is promising a deep dive into the making of the series — from its original network run through its record-breaking 2013 Kickstarter movie campaign — built from interviews and behind-the-scenes reporting rather than a straight retrospective. The book doesn't yet have finalized art, but Johans has confirmed two illustrators for the project: Kate Gabrielle and Vanessa McKee, both credited artists in the comics and pop-culture space, will handle the final cover and interior art once the campaign funds.

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On Bluesky, Johans has also released a set of promotional graphics — four Kickstarter-launch images and a Marshmallow-themed asset — that she's explicitly invited fans, bloggers, podcasters, and newsletter writers to reuse when spreading the word, a grassroots-marketing move typical of fan-funded projects with built-in, organized fandoms.

As of this morning, September 1, 2026, the campaign sits early in its funding window, with weeks still remaining before its deadline.

A fandom with Kickstarter history 

This isn't the franchise's first rodeo on the platform. The Veronica Mars Movie Project, launched by creator Rob Thomas in March 2013, remains one of crowdfunding's defining success stories. The campaign asked fans for $2 million to get a feature film made after Warner Bros. repeatedly passed on the idea, and it blew past that goal in under 11 hours, hitting $1 million in the first four hours alone. By the time it closed 30 days later, 91,585 backers had pledged $5,702,153, nearly triple the original ask.

Thomas has said he got the idea after watching a friend crowdfund $10,000 for an album and wondering whether the same model could work at a much larger scale; at the time, no Kickstarter project had ever raised more than $900,000. Perks scaled with pledge amount, from T-shirts up to walk-on speaking roles for $10,000 backers, and the film — starring Kristen Bell as the title sleuth — hit theaters and video-on-demand on March 14, 2014, a year almost to the day after the campaign launched. Industry observers at the time noted the campaign's success leaned heavily on the show's built-in, highly organized fan base, something few other canceled-show revivals have been able to replicate since — and Johans is hoping to parlay that energy into the new Veronica Mars book, which arrives as a companion/oral history rather than a new film or season — but one banking on the same Marshmallow loyalty that made the 2013 campaign a crowdfunding landmark.

Backers can find full reward tiers and campaign details at the Kickstarter link above.

Source: Bluesky, Kickstarter