Alex Cox Turns To Kickstarter For BILL, THE GALACTIC HERO

In 1983 director Alex Cox took out an option of the science-fiction novel Bill, The Galactic Hero, author Harry Harrison’s reaction to what he saw as the fascist tone of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, but he was never able pull the funding together for the project. Perhaps inspired by the reaction that the Veronica Mars feature film Kickstarter campaign received, the director has turned to the crowdsource funding website to raise the funds to shoot the project as a low-budget, black and white feature primarily on the campus of the University of Colorado where he is currently teaching screenwriting and production.

Cox states in the video below that the crew would primarily be composed of his filmmaking students, though it would be padded out with the likes of special effects expert Phil Tippet (who won an Oscar for Jurassic Park and ironically was nominated for his visual effects work on Paul Verhooven’s adaptation of Starship Troopers), sound designer Richard Beggs (Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban) and cinematographer Tom Richmond (Nick And Nora’s Infinite Playlist and Cox’s Straight To Hell). On the project’s Kickstarter page, Cox goes into further detail as to how the University of Colorado’s facilities will be used, including mention of how the film’s opening and closing segments will be animated by the school’s anime department.

As I wrote this, Cox has already earned pledges that total just shy of 20% of his goal, though he only launched the campaign two days ago. I’ve enjoyed Cox’s past work and have always saw him as a talented filmmaker who never seemed to quite get the break or acclaim that he really deserved.