Who could have seen this coming?
An attempt by Uwe Boll to raise $2.5 million in crowdfunding for a sequel to his dreadful 2007 Postal movie—based on the game of the same name—has predictably hit the rocks. All pledges have been cancelled and are set to be refunded mere days after the film’s Indiegogo campaign launched. That’s a total of 16 pledges, by the way, or about $850 of the film’s overall goal.
The campaign was launched on September 1, and pitched itself as a blow against “political correctness, algorythm [sic] bullshit, woke and cancel culture”. In a description written by Boll himself, the director declared that “To do POSTAL 2… is almost a duty for the freedom of art, speech and life.”
Which is all quite lofty, isn’t it? And that makes it all the stranger that Boll didn’t actually launch the Indiegogo under his own name. Although the director publicised the campaign, it was launched under the name of Gary Otto—Boll’s co-host on his podcast Uwe Boll Raw USA—who seems to have been responsible for all the grunt work of running the whole thing.
Problem was, of course, that neither Boll nor Otto seemed to have informed Postal’s devs at Running With Scissors about it, and they were more than a little baffled. In an update posted on Facebook and shared to Twitter, RWS CEO Vince Desiderio wrote that “The Official position of RWS is we DO NOT support this fundraising effort. I have no fuckin idea who Gary Otto, the project owner is. No one has contacted us about this effort, and it’s a major concern that he clearly states he can use any funds raised for another project.”
That last bit refers to a note from Otto that—if the campaign failed to raise the requisite $2.5 million, or some other completely unforeseeable obstacle cropped up—the money would instead go towards California Fried Movie, a sequel to Boll’s first film German Fried Movie, which currently has 1.5 stars out of 10 on IMDB. “I’d like everyone to know that the money in this campaign will go towards either POSTAL 2 if the goal is met,” wrote Otto in the campaign’s backer discussion section, “OR the concept will get redeveloped into ‘California Fried Movie’ with much of the same content.”
Oh, and all the while Boll was posting on Twitter that $2.5 million wouldn’t actually be enough to make the film the way he wanted to. “If we collect 2.5 mio [sic],” he wrote “I will come up with another 2.5 mio…to make it proper.” Boll offered no insight as to where or how he would magic up another $2.5 million for a sequel to a film everybody hated.
I’m no big-shot Hollywood exec, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how you’re meant to secure funding for your filmmaking dreams. After RWS made its position on the film clear, it wasn’t long before Otto posted another update: “The film is officially changing over to California Fried Movie with NO involvement from RWS.” By way of apology to the 16 backers the campaign had garnered by that point, Otto and Boll offered each of them an Uwe Boll box set.
Alas, it looks like they’ll never get it. Not long after Otto posted that update, the campaign was totally suspended. Its name was changed to “Cancelled all pledges refunded we had no choice,” and Otto posted that “Uwe Boll told me what he wanted and I did that. Everything—all the attacks etc I did nothing to deserve. If someone cursed at you, called you shady and a fraud, you’d probably not be very nice back. Especially when you were only doing your job.”
In a final update, Otto wrote that “Once we get the money, I will refund it back to all of you. Have a nice life OK.”
Since then, social media tied to the campaign has been erased. Otto’s Twitter account and the Twitter account for Uwe Boll Raw USA have both been deleted, leaving only Boll’s personal account as a source for continued updates. In a video posted to the service, Boll alerted fans that “We had to take the campaign down, it’s just not worth it.
“I think, especially on Twitter, some people should be very sorry who insulted Gary Otto, who did everything—what he had to do—based on my orders to him… Now it’s only me on Twitter left.” Meanwhile, “Everybody who paid money will get the money back or get the prize, I don’t know how exactly it works.”
Anyway, long story short: The entire project ended as a flaming trainwreck. “We’re not moving forward with the crowdfunding,” says Boll in the same video. But don’t give up hope, Postal-heads! “Doesn’t mean that we’ll never shoot the film,” he says, “we will see.” Heck, even RWS isn’t totally put off by the whole thing. In the very same update in which Vince Desiderio said the studio had nothing to do with Boll’s campaign, he wrote that “We like Uwe and we look forward to the day our fans can see a new POSTAL movie but not funded like this.”
But, just between you and me, I wouldn’t place any bets.
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