Something interesting is happening right now.  Don Bluth has an Indiegogo campaign to fund a Dragon’s Lair movie. Well, not actually the whole movie, but for a sizzle reel that’ll be used to try to get full studio funding for the actual movie.

Guess it’s time to talk about crowdfunding again, this time with a Hollywood twist!

All right, what’s all this about?

Here’s a quick run down for those who don’t know.  Don Bluth is a legendary animator behind works like Pete’s Dragon, Secret of NIMH, The Land Before Time, and An American Tail (and that doesn’t include his work while with Disney!).  One of his other works was the 1983 arcade game Dragon’s Lair.  What would a feature film animator be doing in a game so old it predates the video game crash?  Well, Dragon’s Lair was fully animated, and the game play was to give the correct input in response to an on screen prompt.  As a game play experience, it’s clunky and archaic by today’s standards, but at the time many of these control conventions hadn’t been set yet.  Instead, it was a bit experimental as a game, but the experiment was in service to allow for visuals that would be otherwise impossible.  It sounds odd, but it was successful, and even spawned a spin off in Space Ace, and a sequel 8 years later in Dragon’s Lair 2.

Don Bluth hasn’t done much recently, though.  His last feature film was 2000’s Titan A.E.  His lack of activity pretty much coincides with the transition away from hand drawn animated features to computer animation.  Hand drawn animation is gaining some retro cred, though, or nostalgia, so Don Bluth appeared on the Nostalgia Critic recently, announcing a project to resurrect Dragon’s Lair and make it into full, traditionally animated movie.  He created an Indiegogo campaign, which as of writing hasn’t concluded, but has already been fully funded, and the first stretch goal has been met.

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