With eight days left to go in its Kickstarter campaign, Joel Schroeder’s Calvin & Hobbes documentary Dear Mr. Watterson has surpassed its goal of raising $50,000 (it had $65,936 donated from 1,027 backers at the time of writing this story), and now will make its way into the light, so to speak.
First, some back story. Schroeder started this process back in 2007, researching Watterson’s seminal comic strip about a boy and his tiger to analyze why it had such an impact on our culture. In 2010, the filmmaker started a Kickstarter capaign that raised nearly $25,000, allowing the documentarian to collect interviews with Watterson’s editor, Lee Salem; cartoonist Berkeley Breathed; actor Seth Green; Looking for Calvin & Hobbes author Nevin Martell; and many more.
Schroeder says the final cut of his film runs 90 minutes. And now he’d like to finish the process of distributing the film by raising enough money to pay for finishing touches in the categories of scoring, animation, legal fees … all of the costs a studio usually eats to help a film reach an audience. Schroeder said on his Kickstarter page, “If we can raise $50,000 by July 14, we’ll use those funds to sprint to the finish.” Sounds like that’s about to happen.
The Kickstarter page for this anticipated Calvin & Hobbes doc has a ton of stills, as well as the first 1/3 of the movie, sped up. We’re sharing that below. It’s not too late to back the film. As with every Kickstarter campaign, the more you give, the better your personal perks. Stop by the page and see what’s up or grabs. We’ll keep you posted in the meantime as to when you might be able to see Dear Mr. Watterson. We can hardly wait.
