Spicy Horse has updated their Kickstarter page for OZombie, which was slated to be a zombie title set in the universe of Oz. Realizing they were not going to make their lofty goal of $950K, the company pulled the plug with the following explanation.
The Oz campaign has to end. There are two realities driving the decision.
First, we’re facing a challenge with the Alice film rights. Since working to remove it from the Oz campaign we've been unable to launch it as a separate campaign here on Kickstarter – the submission has been rejected multiple times and our appeals have failed (multiple campaigns are not allowed). To launch a campaign for the Alice films rights means we must first shut down the Oz campaign.
Second, we wouldn't consider shutting down the Oz campaign if it were trending towards success. As it is, we've reached 15% of our goal with 20 days left in the campaign. Projections suggest we’ll hit 30% of our goal by campaign end. I've been telling myself to remain optimistic and see this thing through – but when the reality of our funding trend is combined with the pressure of the Alice film rights situation...
For Oz, we can always launch another campaign in the future. On the other hand, the Alice film rights are only within reach during a rapidly closing window of opportunity. We’ll sacrifice Oz today in order to have a real chance with Alice.
For the record, we did also consider (and put work towards) an Alice campaign on IndieGoGo, but decided against this for two main reasons. The first is that we’re concerned about the amount of awareness we can generate on IndieGoGo, since we've never run a campaign there. Here on Kickstarter we have followers (you’re reading this). The other issue is we don’t want to be accused of ‘creating confusion’ or deal with any other negative interpretation that might come out of running two campaigns at the same time.
First, we’re facing a challenge with the Alice film rights. Since working to remove it from the Oz campaign we've been unable to launch it as a separate campaign here on Kickstarter – the submission has been rejected multiple times and our appeals have failed (multiple campaigns are not allowed). To launch a campaign for the Alice films rights means we must first shut down the Oz campaign.
Second, we wouldn't consider shutting down the Oz campaign if it were trending towards success. As it is, we've reached 15% of our goal with 20 days left in the campaign. Projections suggest we’ll hit 30% of our goal by campaign end. I've been telling myself to remain optimistic and see this thing through – but when the reality of our funding trend is combined with the pressure of the Alice film rights situation...
For Oz, we can always launch another campaign in the future. On the other hand, the Alice film rights are only within reach during a rapidly closing window of opportunity. We’ll sacrifice Oz today in order to have a real chance with Alice.
For the record, we did also consider (and put work towards) an Alice campaign on IndieGoGo, but decided against this for two main reasons. The first is that we’re concerned about the amount of awareness we can generate on IndieGoGo, since we've never run a campaign there. Here on Kickstarter we have followers (you’re reading this). The other issue is we don’t want to be accused of ‘creating confusion’ or deal with any other negative interpretation that might come out of running two campaigns at the same time.
The company is now instead returning their focus on securing the film rights to American McGee's Alice.