Veronica Mars is an hour-long teen drama that ran for three seasons on UPN (later CW) from September 22, 2004 to May 22, 2007. The brainchild of novelist Rob Thomasnote and produced by Joel Silver (The Matrix producer), the series combined Amateur Sleuth with Kid Detective with a healthy dose of Film Noir and class warfare to tell a Coming of Age Story about a teenage girl using the skills she picked up as the daughter of a former cop turned private investigator to get answers in a typically unjust and corrupt world.
The series was critically acclaimed for its smart writing, compelling story telling, and for Kristen Bell's starmaking performance as the titular Veronica. The first two seasons were known for having a season-long Story Arc. The Driving Questions of Season One have just been covered. Season Two opens with a school bus crash that kills or injures several of Veronica's classmates, with the Marses suspecting foul play and attempting to unravel the complicated motivations behind it; additionally, Logan is implicated in the slaying of a PCHer, Felix Toombs, who was found dead after an altercation which left both Logan and Weevil unconscious.
Season Three, where Veronica goes to Hearst College, deviated from the formula in an attempt to attract new viewers because despite its positive reception, the show struggled to find a large audience. The big mystery format was abandoned, in favor of two short arcs and a hand-full of stand-alone episodes. The show was later canceled at the end of the season, going out on an awesome (and heart-breaking, but maddeningly inconclusive) two-part finale.
On March 13, 2013, a Kickstarter project was launched
to help fund a concluding movie. The Kickstarter broke the record for fastest to reach a million dollars, in four hours and 24 minutes, and reached its $2 million funding goal less than 11 hours in. When the Kickstarter ended on April 12, $5,702,153 had been donated, and the previous record for most donations (87,000 people) was also broken with 91,585 fans sending in donations. As a result, Warner Bros. agreed to distribute and market the film, releasing it to theatres and for download on March 14, 2014 - a year and a day after the Kickstarter launched. Additionally, six months later a Web Video Spin-Off, Play It Again, Dick!, launched on CW Seed. It centers around Ryan Hansen's adventures in attempting to greenlight a Spin-Off of the show centered around his character Dick Casablancas and involves Hansen, Bell, Dohring, and others engaging in some unabashed Adam Westing.
In August 2018, it was announced that an eight-episode revival of the series had been ordered by Hulu, with Kristen Bell and most of the original cast set to return. The long-awaited fourth season finally arrived on Hulu in July 2019, preceded by the addition of the entire series (minus the movie) that same month.
Works in the Franchise:
- Veronica Mars - The TV series that started it all.
- Veronica Mars - The film that continued the show's story after a Time Skip.
- Veronica Mars - The novels that serve as a bridge between the film and the fourth season of the TV series.
