Fan Film Factor Blogger Admits Axanar is Out of Money

Blogger Jonathan Lane launched a $45,000 GoFundMe campaign on October 29, 2016, to pay three months’ worth of rent, utilities and salaries at Axanar’s studio. Titled “We Stand With Axanar,” his pitch confirmed producer Alec Peters’ statement in May that the project was broke:

Already, Alec has put more than $150,000 of his own money into “keeping the lights on,” but he is nearly out of money now. I wasn’t supposed to tell you that. ¹⁾

As a formally independent crowdfund, controlled by Lane, this new money could very well lie beyond the reach of any damages or monetary settlement stemming from the copyright infringement lawsuit Peters faces from CBS and Paramount Pictures.

Lane insisted he set up the campaign without Peters’ knowledge:

Alec Peters does not know I am doing this. He will learn about it when I take this live. Alec himself can’t do any more crowd-funding while a lawsuit is going on, but I can. WE can.²⁾

Lane portrayed Axanar’s struggle with CBS and Paramount as a “David and Goliath story. The studios’ strategy is to intimidate and make things too expensive for a fan to outlast the seige [sic].”

The notion that, after accumulating $1.4 million from crowdfunding and merchandise sales, Axanar was out of money raised questions about Peters’ spending and financial records, something his attorney, Erin Ranahan, worked to keep from public view:

Defendants produced the financial information … in an effort to be cooperative and avoid wasting the Court’s time on discovery disputes. Defendants fully intend to seek to exclude these expenditures before trial.³⁾

See also: Loosening Restrictions on Financial Information

For their part, the studios’ attorneys claimed Peters’ effort to restrict who can see his financial records stemmed from questionable spending on personal expenses, such as car insurance, tires and travel:

The material in that document may embarrass Mr. Peters by showing the ways in which he spent funds that were raised from Star Trek fans. This is not a proper basis for designating a document as Highly Confidential.⁴⁾

As of January 2016, when Axanar’s Indiegogo campaign was shuttered by the lawsuit, AxaMonitor estimated the production appeared to have $565,330 on hand (minus expenses between July 31 and December 31, 2016). At the time, the shortfall between money raised from both Kickstarter and Indiegogo and the production budget for Axanar stood at $745,566 — 66 percent of the film’s production budget.

Meanwhile, in its April 2, 2016, FAQ, Axanar explained the amount of cash it has on hand changes by the month:

The amount of money left over from [Indiegogo] changes every month due to the “burn rate” of maintaining the studio while Axanar Productions works through the details of the lawsuit.⁵⁾

Lane pegged Axanar’s monthly expenses at $15,000.⁶⁾

Lane’s appeal to fans consisted of painting Axanar as a victim of studio intimidation on the precipice of financial ruin, followed by a standard tactic used in election campaign fundraising:

But we’re so close to the finish line! If we can just keep the lights on for a few more months, this case can play out in court and we’ll all know the conclusion … good or bad. HELP US REACH THE FINISH LINE!⁷⁾

The GoFundMe page didn’t indicate how Lane planned to reach out to Axanar’s 12, 000 donors other than through Twitter and Facebook share buttons, and via his blog, Fan Film Factor, which Peters touted to supporters as “the only legitimate news source on the Axanar lawsuit online.”⁸⁾

Since the GoFundMe effort is technically independent of Axanar, Lane should not have access to donor mailing lists gathered by Peters’ first three crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo — something that caused trouble before when Peters used the lists to spam donors to advertise a prop auction conducted by a separate company, Propworx, which he also owns.

See also: Donors Complain Company Spammed Using Axanar List

Kickstarter’s terms of service prohibit projects from using email addresses and other personal information gathered in one of its campaigns for advertising other endeavors. Though Peters insisted the use of the donor lists was appropriate, his own spokesman, Mike Bawden admitted the effort may have run afoul of federal anti-spam laws.

“There are right ways and wrong ways to go about using email solicitations,” Bawden told AxaMonitor. “This wasn’t the right way to do it.”

NO DONATIONS had been received for the Axanar GofFundMe campaign in its first six days.

As of this post, the only comments on the GoFundMe page were negative. Axanar donor Rob Roberson’s comment was typical:

I will happily donate to the cause the day after we all get to look at Axanar’s books and see “exactly” how each penny of the money I previously donated was spent. This is an incredible amount of arrogance to ask for more money for a product that had already raised more then enough cash to be completed.⁹⁾

In the first six days of Lane’s effort, the campaign had yet to receive a donation.

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