Crowdfunding Is Making Your Pop Culture Dreams Come True

In June, Don Cheadle took to Indiegogo to bring Miles Davis's story to the big screen in Miles Ahead. "Surprisingly, Miles’ life, his passion, his creativity, his fire have never been brought to life in a film and the fact that his family has chosen me to do this now is an honor," Don wrote on the campaign page. Don, who is set to star in and direct the movie, is so committed to the project he's willing to play a round of golf with contributors who smack down a cool $10K. As of Thursday, nearly $80K of the $325K goal was raised.

James Franco is looking to fans for financial help to adapt his series of short stories from his first book, Palo Alto, inspired by high school events. In his campaign video, James asks for contributions and says crowdsourcing is "the best way to make movies." He has raised just over $25,000 toward the project's $500,000 goal and contributions will run until July 17. What sets James's crowdfunding apart from the rest is that all of the profits from the project will go to The Art of Elysium, a nonprofit organization James works with that provides creative outlets for hospitalized children suffering from serious medical conditions.

In March, Kristen Bell launched The Veronica Mars Movie Project and made Kickstarter history. Her campaign closed with $5.7 million in donations, was the fastest project to reach $2 million (in just 10 hours), and has the most project backers of any Kickstarter project with over 90,000 supporters. The project has already begun shooting and is being directed by Rob Thomas.

Whitney Port launched her Road to the Runway Indiegogo campaign in September 2012 to raise $50,000 to fund her Spring 2013 NY Fashion Week show. Whitney used incentives for donations, promising that a $5 donation yielded a personal tweet, $30 got fans a gift card to whitneyeve.com, and $750 provided the opportunity to intern with the designer for a week. Despite such perks, Whitney fell short of her goal and received $10,000 through her crowdfunding attempt.

In May, Zach Braff promoted his smaller, personal film project, Wish I Was Here, which he wrote with his brother Adam, and will be a follow-up to his 2004 hit movie, Garden State. Zach surpassed his $3 million fundraising goal over the weekend by $105,000 and took to Twitter to voice his gratitude. The actor-director also revealed that his cast will include Kate Hudson, Anna Kendrick, and Jim Parsons, and is due out in September.

Melissa Joan Hart's project Darci's Walk of Shame was canceled two weeks ago after falling short of its $2 million goal. From a month of online promotions, Melissa collected about $50,000 from 315 backers. Although she promised her movie would embody much of the flavor seen on her TV hit, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and her romantic comedy Drive Me Crazy, the '90s nostalgia could not drive substantial funding.

Girls star Zosia Mamet teamed up with her sister, Clara, to make a Kickstarter campaign for a folk music video called Bleak Love. Together, Zosia and Clara perform in their band, Cabin Sisters, and turned to crowdfunding in May to help create their first music video. "Bleak Love"'s financing was unsuccessful, raising just under $3,000 of the $32,000 goal.

As LaVar Burton has discovered, the generation of kids that grew up on Reading Rainbow on PBS are now adults willing to shell out cash to help him relaunch the popular program. After the show was canceled in 2009, LaVar and his passionate team released a successful iPad and Kindle app, RRKidz. LaVar has now turned to Kickstarter with the hopes of adding additional platforms, producing rich content, and giving access to more students. Contributions to the campaign exceeded its initial $1 million goal by the end of its first day, prompting the team to raise the stakes and ask for $5 million. With the success comes scrutiny and speculation. In a recent interview with thinkprogress.org, LaVar said a debate about the show's effectiveness and cancellation was "bullsh*t."