One year after it made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival, Dear White People’s impact is still being felt at the box office. Indiegogo, the world’s largest crowdfunding platform, announced the film, which raised its initial production funds on their site, has risen to new heights.
The film, which was released on October 17, has broken the U.S. domestic box office record for a film that has crowdfunded. Since its opening, Dear White People has grossed $4,404,154 domestically to date, whizzing past former record-holder Zach Braff’s film, Wish I Was Here, which only grossed $3,591,299.
The film’s runaway success caps off a record-breaking two-year growth period in film for Indiegogo, and is the subject of a new Indiegogo documentary on YouTube (see below).
“Indiegogo has experienced 115% growth in the film category over the last couple of years,” said Slava Rubin, CEO of Indiegogo. “Since our launch at Sundance in 2008, 41,106 films in 166 countries have received funds from Indiegogo. We are proud to offer filmmakers worldwide the best platform for not only funding their projects, but also bringing them to market.”
In the past six months, Indiegogo has expanded its ecosystem of tools, resources and partners for its customers–from signing a deal with Amplifier, a perk-fulfillment outlet, to launching InDemand, a new service that enables filmmakers to move into the next phase of operations for a project, to partnering with Vimeo, which gives Indiegogo campaigners a unique channel for distributing the films they create.
Other notable Indiegogo-film campaigns in 2014 include the Roger Ebert doc, Life Itself, Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis biopic, Miles Ahead, the creative Lily Amirpour feature, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and the Oscar-nominated Best Documentary Feature, Last Days in Vietnam.
Check out the Indiegogo documentary on Dear White People, below: