I wanted to take a moment to explain something that I could have made clearer at the beginning: $2 million was our minimum goal. It would be enough to get a movie made, but it was never going to let us make the exact movie we really wanted to make, or the one we know you deserve. I’ve spoken to the press a lot in the past month — turns out they’ve been pretty excited about this whole thing — and one thing I’ve explained is that the final script will depend on how much we’re able to raise. $2 million would have been enough to get us back on the screen. When we started, we didn’t want to set our goal higher than that, for fear we might lose our chance to make the movie at all. But because of you, we did go higher. Way higher.

We’re at $4.5 million now. That’s a lot of money. But for a feature length movie, it’s still a pretty conservative budget. Everything you’ve pledged beyond the initial $2 million gives us more options, and for that I’m eternally grateful. More backing means more locations, more sets, more actors, and most important of all, more shooting days.

The bottom line? That extra support will give us the freedom to make the best movie possible.

That additional money could mean the difference between a movie that lasts 90 minutes, and one that lasts 110. It could also mean the difference between us shooting in Southern California, where the series was shot, and in a less expensive location somewhere else.

(To be clear, I can’t make guarantees yet about how long the movie will be, or exactly where we will shoot, and the last thing I want is to make a promise I can’t keep. But what I can promise is this: the more we end up with, the more freedom we’ll have, and the better our movie will be. That’s what this is about.)

That’s a long explanation, but we know we’re asking a lot of you. In return, we want you to know that we’re not going to take all of the additional funds and swim around in a mountain of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. Some of the money we raise will go toward the different rewards and incentives we’re offering, like t-shirts, posters, DVDs, and premiere events. Turns out, a lot of it will also go toward shipping costs to get those rewards out to you. But I promise: after those costs, every dollar we raise will go toward making this movie the best it can be.