FORT GREENE — Brooklyn native Spike Lee wants to make a new thriller about "sexy bloodsuckers" and he's asking his fans to do the right thing by helping fund it.
The celebrity filmmaker, whose 2006 film, "Inside Man," cost $45 million to make and snatched up $29 million at the box office according boxofficemojo.com, hopes to fundraise $1.25 million on Kickstarter.
Lee says his new film will be "a different vision of what some under-served audiences might want to see" and added "with the current climate in The Hollywood Studio System it's not an encouraging look for Independent Filmmakers."
Lee learned recently from his NYU students that Zach Braff and "the people behind 'Veronica Mars'" used Kickstarter to fund their film projects.
"The truth is I applaud what they did and I want to do what they did," he wrote. "I’m an Independent Filmmaker and I wanted to try this."
Lee has said little about the project, divulging only that it's about "human beings who are addicted to blood," and that it's "funny, sexy, and bloody (and it's not "Blacula")..."
But some people are skeptical about a prominent filmmaker asking the public for money.
One supporter, Iris M Gross, wrote, "I'm like the rest of you, I'm like Spike is a millionaire, he can afford to use his own money for this project."
But Gross decide to donate anyway. "I look at it like an investment in liberation. I can still put in a little change, about the same price as a Big Mac combo, to send a message to Hollywood that if you won't tell our stories, we'll do it ourselves."
Lee is offering a mention on Twitter for a $5 donation and at the high end he will give away courtside tickets to see a Knicks game with him at Madison Square Garden for a $10,000 donation.
The project has raised more than $100,000 dollars in the last 24 hours.
