Felicia Day is skipping the studio system entirely. On July 20, she launched a Kickstarter to reunite the original cast of The Guild for a 20th anniversary movie targeted for 2027. The catch? No Hollywood producers were involved — and Day says that was the whole point.
For the uninitiated, The Guild was Day’s 2007 web series about a ragtag group of MMORPG players, one of the first genuine hit shows on YouTube. It launched her career, spawned the viral song “(Do You Want to Date My) Avatar,” and led her to found the Geek & Sundry channel, where Critical Role eventually kicked off in 2015. The costume from that music video now sits in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History — though as Day tells it, visitors were far more interested in Dorothy’s slippers and Xena’s outfit.
The revival was born out of frustration. A Hollywood producer reached out, but the pitch was to reboot the show with a younger cast — effectively taking her creation and handing it to someone else. “I’m very used to being rejected by Hollywood, but just the idea of giving up my baby really made me angry,” Day told Polygon. Rather than shop a script around, she went straight to the fans.
There’s a narrative shift this time. The original series followed the Knights of Good gaming an MMO together, but the reunion film — titled The Guild: Reunion Movie — swaps the raid dungeon for a renaissance faire, one of Day’s favorite places. Part of the reasoning is personal: she’s stepped away from MMOs, gravitating instead toward single-player RPGs and cozy co-op titles. “I used to be a professional warlock,” she said, “so being a tourist in an MMO is not the funnest for me.”
The campaign is more than a film fund. Backers can also support two tabletop projects: a new The Guild role-playing game, and a dating sim card game called Swords & Sweethearts. The special edition of the latter features celebrity cards among its collaborations.
Reward tiers round things out with poopcorn buckets sporting a medieval bucket design, cast-signed posters, and other physical goods — the kind of merch crowdfunding does well.
Day frames the project as a broader statement about creator-driven media, pointing to this year’s wave of hits from YouTube personalities. “Hollywood has sort of crumbled enough that the cracks are there where people can really invent new ways of getting an audience,” she said. “It’s a great time to be a creator with innovative ideas.” Whatever comes next, she insists, will be on her own terms.
