dailynewsnblog
Felicia Day was very excited when she got a call from a Hollywood producer interested in The Guild, her 2007 web series about a group of MMORPG players. But that enthusiasm quickly soured when Day heard the actual pitch.
“They were like, ‘Hey, we’d like you to explore writing a new version of The Guild with a new set of younger cast members,’” Day told Polygon in a video interview. “I’m very used to being rejected by Hollywood, but just the idea of giving up my baby – the thing that made my career – really made me angry.”
Day decided she would make more of The Guild on her own terms. On July 20, she’s launching a Kickstarter campaign to reunite all of the original cast members for a 20th anniversary movie in 2027.
“I didn’t even take this movie to anybody in Hollywood because I just shuddered at the thought of some person who didn’t understand the show and the community looking at the script and being like, ‘Can this person be Paul Rudd?’” Day said. “I shot [The Guild] in my house for a couple hundred dollars. I have a really good feeling that the fans will give me the budget to make something a little bit elevated, but at the same time just make what we all love about the show.”
The Guild was one of the first hit YouTube series, and Day went on to found Geek & Sundry, the YouTube and Twitch channel where Critical Role launched in 2015. Day said her show helped lay the groundwork for this year’s string of hit movies from YouTube content creators, including Backrooms, Obsession, and Iron Lung.
“Hollywood has sort of crumbled enough that the cracks are there where people can really invent new ways of getting an audience, making content, and reaching fans,” Day said. “It’s not a great time to be in the industry with all the upheaval, but it is a great time to be a creator with innovative ideas, which has always been my passion.”
Her show proved so influential that the costume Day wore for The Guild’s viral song “(Do You Want to Date My) Avatar” earned a place in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
“I went and visited, and I stood very conspicuously next to it and posed,” she said. “My face is there, and I wanted to be noticed so badly, and no one cared. They were busy looking at Dorothy’s slippers and Xena’s outfit. It was the most humbling moment, because you’re in the permanent collection of one of the most important museums in the world and nobody cares.”
Roles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Eureka, and Supernatural have made Day a geek icon, but she’s abandoned her dreams of Hollywood stardom.
“I’ve been in so many development hell situations,” she said. “Nothing you do earns you a place that’s higher. You are a tool, and a very disposable tool. It’s a business. It’s capitalism. You are something that they would love to replace and be able to not pay for.”
While the Knights of Good game together to play an MMO, the reunion film will be set at a renaissance faire, which Day says is one of her favorite places. Part of the motivation for the change of focus is that Day isn’t playing MMOs anymore.
“I used to be a professional warlock, so being a tourist in an MMO is not the funnest for me,” Day said. “Six hours a week is not really enough to get into an MMO and be good at it, so I tend to gravitate toward single-player RPGs and co-op games that are more cozy in nature like Stardew Valley and all the Stardew clones out there.”
She also plays a lot of board games with her nine-year-old daughter, who is currently attending a Dungeons & Dragons summer camp. Day said motherhood was another reason she wanted to make The Guild movie.
“Hollywood had a geek girl moment, and I think I was part of spurring that. But you turn into a mom, you get into your 40s, and you’re dead,” she said. “I see much more famous women my age who are not working, and [Hollywood] certainly doesn’t think a woman of my age is a gamer. I am going to be the artist that I need to be, and whatever I make next, it’ll be on my own terms because that’s how I thrive.”
Beyond funding The Guild: Ren Faire’d, the anniversary Kickstarter will also raise money for a new 120-page The Guild tabletop role-playing game from Hit Point Press and the dating sim card game Swords & Sweethearts. Along with featuring The Guild characters like Codex (Day) and Tinkerballa (Amy Okuda), the special version of Swords & Sweethearts features collaborations with celebrities including Troy Baker, Jonathan Frakes, Alan Tudyk, and Brent Spiner. Other rewards include a custom popcorn bucket, pins, stickers, a T-shirt, posters signed by the cast, and a graphic novel omnibus.
“I just want the fans to be as delighted as I am to unveil what we have in store for them for the next year or so,” Day said.
