Felicia Day Talks The Guild Reunion Movie’s Record-Breaking Kickstarter

Felicia Day is the geeky mastermind behind the massively influential six-season web series The Guild. Now, nearly 20 years after that project’s 2007 debut, she is returning with a celebratory reunion movie.

The crowdfunding campaign for The Guild Reunion Movie: Ren Faire’d launched July 15 on Kickstarter and has raised more than $4 million since, becoming the quickest movie to raise $1 million in the platform’s history (it reached the benchmark in three hours, surpassing Veronica Mars’ four hours). The campaign’s success speaks to Day’s ability to carve her own path in the industry, generating a loyal audience and establishing connections with creators that have the same passion for independent media. She is the founder of Geek & Sundry, an entertainment network known for hosting the now-enormously popular Critical Role from 2015 to 2019. She has also had supporting roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Day started The Guild to rewrite the stereotypes that follow gamers, especially female gamers, in Hollywood. And that goal has blossomed into a whole new space for gamers to connect on the internet. Day stopped by the Den of Geek studio at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 to discuss The Guild’s comeback and the processes of creating and funding a hotly-anticipated independent movie.

Den of Geek: You’ve said that you started The Guild because you wanted to reshape the image of gamers in Hollywood. What are some specific stereotypes that you disagreed with?

Felicia Day: Well, back when I started The Guild in 2006, people just thought ‘Teenagers, basements, gamer T-shirts, surly attitudes,’ and that was not ever my experience. It certainly isn’t the experience now, because gaming has grown up a lot and transformed, and is more inclusive and more diverse. But back then, when I said that I was a big gamer in an audition for a TV show or a movie or whatever, they just looked at me like I was such a weirdo.

Over and over again, I would audition for these parts, and I just never fit in anywhere, and it made me feel really isolated and weird. So that was one of the things I wanted to show the world: the true nature of who I was as a girl who gamed. That’s how The Guild started and continues to this day.

You mention feeling super isolated or weird during that time. Were there ever times when you felt defeated or like you kind of had to be what people wanted you to be?

Girl, every Thursday. Now, I will say that the last five or six years, I’ve kind of shed a lot [of that]. I think COVID really was the lesson that got through to my brain. I love working in Hollywood. I love acting and hosting, but for me, pitching TV shows, producing, and writing, it just was debilitating for me as a creator to put myself through trying to change my ideas for other people.

It was particularly hard because my stories were resonating so much on the internet, and yet they meant nothing to this other entertainment area. I think my career has proven that if you find the people who like your stuff, you can keep making it. And, in doing this Kickstarter for the reunion movie, that was the ultimate goal – to just completely unplug myself from expectations, from trying to prove anything.

Even though it’s been 20 years, this project has experienced a lot of support. Is it still crazy to see? Is it overwhelming?

We did a 12-hour live stream at the launch [of the movie’s Kickstarter]. Realizing that people were showing up, and in incredible numbers with incredible support – at one point I just started sobbing.

What was your approach to asking not only the cast to come back, but also getting the fans back again?

I will say do not underestimate the undertaking that is a Kickstarter. I’ve been working on the script for over a year and I have been working with the Kickstarter manager and my producer since the beginning of the year. If I could go back in time, we would have started six months earlier on all of it.

We were overwhelmed with the amount of support. We thought we’d have like four or five days to get more merch out or a week to get new celebrities with a card game announced. So we were kind of caught with our pants down because of this success, which you wouldn’t ever let yourself dream about.

What are some challenges that you anticipate, or maybe have already come into contact with, making The Guild into a movie?

As far as the writing process, it is no different. Because in past seasons, aside from season 1 when I wrote it initially as a half-hour comedy, every season I wrote as a movie and then put the webcams in. So it’s really not any different structurally or creative wise.

There are a lot of logistical things though. We’re shooting 14 years later, and everything’s much more expensive, especially in Los Angeles. But, knock on wood, we make it so that I don’t have to change the script very much. I hope to make it an epic celebration of the show and also an epic celebration of ren faires, because I love ren faires and I would hate to not do the setting justice.

What is your favorite memory collaborating with your creative team and cast through the years?

Oh man, there are so many of them. I think one of my highlights in The Guild history is, we had a very viral music video called “Do You Want to Date My Avatar”, and it was a surprise. Thank goodness Xbox decided to come in and fund it. They got us a stripper bus and drove us in our costumes to the panel room [at SDCC]. Now they wouldn’t give us a big panel room; it would hold only like 250 people. There were literally 1,000 people outside waiting to get in. We walked in and we played the video, in our costumes, and it was probably the most electric cool moment I’ve ever had in my life.

What is your advice to creators who might be afraid that they don’t have the resources or even the audience for their own stories?

I always want to assure you that you’ve got what you need inside. You just have to dig. Your audience is your power, but it’s not the number of followers, it’s not the number of hits. It’s really a long-term relationship with your fans.

I know people from 2004 from the internet who are still my friends today who are helping me with my Kickstarter. To have those relationships, that loyal audience, you can’t trade it for anything. So don’t look for that external gratification to be the end all. Look at the process of the art. You never know what’s really going to strike your heart, what’s going to strike the audience’s heart. The sweet spot is finding where those meld and to just keep making stuff.

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