Firefly fans who have been waiting to see two of their favorite stars reunited on screen found something to be excited about on Tuesday, when Nathan Fillion announced on Twitter that he and and co-star Alan Tudyk were crowdfunding a new comedy Web series, Con Man, on Indiegogo. Only two days after the campaign’s launch, not only has it been successfully funded, but it has nearly tripled its initial goal.
At least part of the series’ premise might sound a little familiar to fans of Firefly. Tudyk plays Wray Nerely, a co-star on the cult sci-fi series Spectrum, which (of course) was canceled before its time. Nerely spends his time on the convention circuit, while his friend and Spectrum star Jack Moore (Fillion) has become a major movie star. The show focuses on Wray and the strange things that happen to him between these conventions and other events.
Tudyk, who is the driving force behind the project, is quite open about his motivations in creating the project, writing on the Con Man Indiegogo page: “I wanted to make a show that featured all of my favorite convention artists and friends together. Not only that, I wanted to celebrate the world where heroes, villains, zombie hunters, and space pirates all overlap. I especially wanted to work with my friend Nathan Fillion again.”
The show will air exclusively on Vimeo, and a pledge of at least $25 gets backers early access to the entire series in HD. This is limited to a 90-day period, presumably because after this point the series will be available for everyone. There is no limit to how many times each episode can be streamed during the 90-day period.
While the Con Man Web series has already been successfully funded and has a long way to go before the end of the campaign, there are a number of stretch goals that, in addition to the usual crowdfunding goodies, add more episodes to the series’ first season. The initial number of episodes was three, though at the time of this writing four more have already been added and the fifth, unlocked at $1,150,000, has nearly been unlocked. Four more are unlockable at higher stretch goals, with the highest being at $1,750,000.
The campaign comes to a close on April 10, and there is currently no telling if more potential episodes will be added if all current stretch goals are unlocked. Check out the series’ campaign video below.