Happy new year! While there's a lot we'd like to forget about 2020, there are a great many more things that we'd like to remember. Even flying through the headwinds of a global pandemic, we were able to grow our community, our revenues, our project slate, and our team! Check out some of the highlights of everything WE'VE ACCOMPLISHED TOGETHER in 2020 — in spite of all the murder hornets and toilet paper shortages.
SAVE YOURSELVES!
In January, we used our innovative Film Scout App to find a hidden gem at the Sundance Film Festival! After more than 120,000 votes, one film rose above the rest as the clear winner — the sci-fi comedy Save Yourselves! We were stoked to partner with Bleecker Street to release this incredible film in July, I mean, October to more than 300 theaters as well as every VOD platform imaginable. Legion M also designed and released an entire Save Yourselves! collection of merchandise and even brought more than 50 of our investors to the virtual premiere!
ARCHENEMY
We kicked off the year on the set of Archenemy — one of our biggest project investments to date. Dozens of our investors and their guests won a contest to visit the set and learn how films come to life; and several lucky Legion M members were cast as background actors in the Trendible office scene! Beloved genre film festival Beyond Fest world premiered Archenemy at the Mission Tiki Drive-In Theater near Los Angeles, where Legion M reserved more than half of the tickets for our community. In December, the film hit theaters and VOD nationwide with a major press campaign that saw our star Joe Manganiello on several late-night and daytime talk shows. Capping the film’s release, Legion M and Alamo Drafthouse co-hosted a totally splash-worthy virtual screening and after-party, where we all got to hang out and see each other for the first time in a long time in 8-bit glory.
FUNDRAISING MILESTONES
Earlier this year, we were pleased to announce our new transfer agent KoreConX (to replace Carta) and successfully imported all investors from the first six rounds of funding. Speaking of funding rounds, Legion M launched its historic seventh round of fundraising on the Wefunder platform this summer, along with an exciting incentives program — we offered perks and rewards for new investors from some of our favorite partners, including Alamo Drafthouse, the International Screenwriters Association, and Entertainment Earth. If you've already invested, we'll send you instructions on how to claim your perk in the new year! And if you haven't invested... there's still time. :)
NEW PROJECTS ANNOUNCED
2020 was a banner year for new projects in new media! In addition to our feature films Save Yourselves! and Archenemy, we were proud to work on several new initiatives this year. In April, we invited the Legion M community to submit prompts and story ideas for the Warner 150 short-form series "The Insiders," which aired exclusively on Legion M's brand new Twitch channel. In May, we announced our partnership with QCODE on the paranormal audio podcast "The Left Right Game," starring and produced by Tessa Thompson, which was recently named one of the top 5 podcasts of 2020 by Entertainment Weekly! And this fall, we were excited to announce development on our animated noir series "Ghosts of Manhattan," based on the books by George Mann, with partners Powerhouse Animation (Castlevania, Blood of Zeus), David & Michael Uslan (Joker, The Batman), Boman Modine (VFX for Dark Knight Rises), and showrunner Aaron Waltke (Emmy Award-winning writer on Trollhunters, Wizards: Tales of Arcadia).
PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT
Because there was so little production in 2020, we were able to spend time moving our development projects forward. Our team has pitched every major streamer and studio this year (including Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon, Apple, CBS All Access, and more), including pitching fantasy series "The Emperor's Blades" (as live action and adult animation), and animated noir series "Ghosts of Manhattan." We have also been pitching one of our (hint: sci-fi comedy) series in development that is as-yet unannounced, but was ranked highest by YOU in one of our M-Pulse surveys! We also attached a studio-based production company as our partner on sci-fi steampunk/fantasy series Evermor; we are perfecting the pitch now and will be taking the project out to studios in the new year. In a case of art imitating... well... art, our action-western feature film Girl With No Name screenplay got a fantastic rewrite inspired by Legion M's comic book! Director Tanya Wexler has begun casting for the four main leads, which will continue in earnest in the new year. Also, we worked on several new development projects that are in various stages of packaging and financing that we can’t wait to announce in 2021!
COVID-19 IMPACT
As a startup, Legion M was of course affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. But Legion M is more than just a business — we're a community of people. We knew right away that our members would be impacted by this sudden disruption, and we knew we had to be a force for good. We immediately began design and production on a line of cloth face masks with 100% of the net proceeds benefitting The Actors Fund. We called upon the first responders in our community to tell us their stories so that we could highlight them on our website and social media channels. And we even created a page on our storefront to highlight the members of our community who owned small businesses.
EVENTS
Boy, did we have big plans for comic cons this year! That all went out the window in February with the postponement or outright cancellation of all comic conventions. Even so, there were a few events that we squeezed in before the world shut down — and then we took everything virtual! Pre-COVID, we attended C2E2 in Chicago; the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah; The Money Show in Orlando; and we even hosted a screening of Color Out of Space in Los Angeles! Post-COVID, we set our sights online. First we co-hosted the first ever Virtual Pop Expo. Then, we amped up the LegionM.tv Twitch Channel with weekly AMAs, game nights, and watch parties. Next, we hit up Comic Con @ Home where we programmed and hosted 30 hours of live streaming content, exclusive merch, and our own Discord channel! We also had virtual premieres for both of our films, Save Yourselves! and Archenemy — and for the latter, we even hosted an 8-bit after party for our members to party virtually after the film!
MANDY
This September marked two years since Mandy hit theaters and became an instant cult favorite. To celebrate, we hosted special screenings at drive-ins and theaters across the country, complete with free Cheddar Goblin Macaroni & Cheese! That's right — we actually manufactured real-life Cheddar Goblin Mac & Cheese! These collectible and delicious boxes of cheesy goodness have been such a hit that we initially sold out and had to order more! Fans have been submitting their original mac & cheese creations for the chance to win a twelve-pack of goblin goodness — a fun, pandemic-inspired diversion. We also created an exclusive Mandy figure with studio Level 52 (featuring our favorite chainsaw battle), along with a cuddly, cheesy Cheddar Goblin plushie. To top off this year of crazy evil, we just announced that we acquired a license for Nicolas Cage's likeness to design and sell Red Miller merch for hardcore Mandy fans!
JAY & SILENT BOB
Even in a pandemic, we were able to support the grand opening(s) of the Mooby's Pop-Up in Los Angeles and across the country! Legion M designed and manufactured face masks, t-shirts, and lanyards for the restaurant and bar (as well as some familiar faces in that photo up there). We also sold thousands of discs of Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, coming off the heels of the film shattering box office precedents.
GROWING THE TEAM
We were fortunate to welcome some new members to the Legion M team this year! Prophetess joined the ranks as our Director of Finance, while Coop and Tyler are our new growth hackers. We also welcomed Eric Ries, American entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup, to our advisory board. And our interns — Weiqi, Erin, and Miles — helped us analyze our data, read our scripts, create social media content, and give us valuable feedback. We're looking forward to bringing on some new interns in the Spring 2021 semester!
2020 UNCAGED NYE BASH!
The best way to kick 2020 to the curb? With some crazy evil fun! On Thursday, Dec 31st, Legion M and Alamo Drafthouse hosted a MANDY watch party where the audience was treated to an (optional) live commentary from Cheddar Goblin himself! Then for the next 4 hours through each of the USA time zones' ball drops, we hosted an 8-bit after-party on the Gather.town platform. Party-goers could design their avatar and walk around a digital recreation of the South Lamar Highball, where they were treated to live music, comedy, poetry, magic, games, quests, karaoke, virtual dance floors, poker, and surprise celebrity drop-ins. We're still working out the kinks and perfecting the flow, but this sort of event is perfect in the time of nationwide lockdowns. We hope to do more of these events in the future!
If we were able to accomplish all this in the Worst Year Ever... then we can't wait to see what we can do together in 2021. Onward and upward!
❤️All of us at Legion M