Hadn't seen any news for this Kickstarter and it seems pretty appropriate...
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mmbroadcast/turn-to-400-the-fighting-fantasy-documentary-film
from the
KS page:
Turn to 400 - The Fighting Fantasy documentary film
Fighting Fantasy was born 30 years ago, Ian Livingstone & Steve Jackson started a role playing phenomenon. This film tells their story.
In 1982, Ian and Steve finally saw their first Fighting Fantasy book hit the shelves. Warlock of Firetop Mountain sold out in record time. Before too long the publisher was asking for more titles and soon after that Ian and Steve’s books topped the best sellers charts. The series propelled them to become overnight celebrities in Britain and went on to sell over 16 million copies worldwide. It was translated into more than 20 languages.
Along the way, Steve and Ian lived in a van on the streets of London, battled adversity with the bank managers, got by on a dribble of money and worked out of an office/shop/mail order room the size of a bread-bin. Neither ever stopped being friends and both are avid gamers to this day – this is the story of two men whose dreams paid off.
We're going to create a 60 minute documentary which details Steve and Ian's background, the early days of Games Workshop and the decisions which they made. You'll see a group of people dedicated to games, and see how the Fighting Fantasy phenomenon took off and how for many of the people involved it was something so much more than just another series of books. We'll see what happened to the artists involved in
FF, and how Steve and Ian themselves went on to do so much more in the same field. We'll touch on Lara Croft, Lionhead, Sorcery, Eidos and so much more...
Fighting Fantasy has a number of famous fans who we hope to speak to: Dara Ó Briain, Charlie Higson, Michael Acton Smith, Alex Garland to name a few.
The Fighting Fantasy game-book was the Gameboy of its day, the
DS of its day, the ipod touch of its day…
We are in this ‘all or nothing’ – it would be a great shame if we couldn’t meet our goal and get this story told. We worked the numbers up for an hour long documentary for TV and the budget would have been around £100k, we really have pulled in a lot to get the budget down to this amount.
We can however, exceed the goal, and if we do we’d like to go even further - visit the birthplace of D&D and meet some of the people that got Steve and Ian so excited back in the ‘70s. We’d also like to try to bring out a limited edition Blu-Ray of the film. At present we’re only planning a limited DVD release and
HD digital download; despite filming in beautiful broadcast spec full
HD. In exceeding the target we would also be able to employ some 'toys' on the shoots, and possibly take Ian and Steve to more places to re-live their journey!
We, as fans, wanted to make a television documentary to commemorate the anniversary of the series, Ian was about to celebrate the 30th anniversary by releasing a new book, we wanted to be in on that…
As well as celebrating the series' 30th anniversary, we want to tell the story of the birth of Games Workshop and how Fighting Fantasy spread globally. In fact, we have some of this in the can, having speculatively filmed several interviews and events with Ian and Steve. This gave us enough to put together the taster/teaser that you may have already seen on YouTube. We also have some behind the scenes shots concerning the naming and release of Ian's new Fighting Fantasy book 'Blood of the Zombies.'
With this story as an idea for TV, we fought the same prejudice against the fantasy genre that Ian and Steve initially encountered. Like them we wouldn't let it lie. Kickstarter now allows
UK projects, so we've prepared ourselves and joined in and together we can get this film made and the story out there.
Your money will go to pay for additional filming, transport and accommodation while filming, equipment hire, graphics and voice overs. While we can call in a lot of favours, this kind of thing is still not cheap, particularly when it comes to using original music and archive footage - I think everyone wants to be reminded of Ian's hairstyle when he was on the BBC's Saturday morning kids TV show 'Saturday Superstore' - and see how he handled himself when under fire from veteran broadcaster John Craven for Fighting Fantasy 'not being proper books.'