As swarms of you posted last night, John de Lancie tossed a tweet out saying they had "Shut down production on the Bronycon Documentary. Many took this as an axing for the DVD/Blu-Ray sales, as well as giving up on getting it to the film festivals and major websites. This was not the case however! The only thing they have stopped production on is the bonus materal. The Bronycon Doc filmed hundreds of hours worth of footage, the majority of which is sitting around on hard drives going un-used. Their original plan was to move this into bonus discs and side projects.
Why are they not doing this? Piracy is the big one. The documentary did not cost $60,000 and have the extra 260k floating around as many people thought was the case. When they breached their kickstarter goal, it gave them the power to do something they never would have planned on. Professional editors were hired, more locations were added (including Europe), and overall quality and length was ramped up. It costs a ton of money to get actual industry workers on the job. Technically the entire kickstarter was for the documentary specifically, so this was just icing on the cake if all went well. But with the lower than expected sales due to the rampant piracy, covering costs and providing extra content just isn't in the cards.
They will still continue to persue film festivals, Netflix, Amazon Video, and the upcoming blu-ray. Expect to see those in the future!
Head on over here for the full press release from the documentary staff.
