How’s this for a 100th birthday present? After working to secure the rights for Orson Welles‘ final, unfinished film The Other Side of the Wind, it looks like things are moving ahead in post-production towards completion. The film, which began production 15 years before Welles’ death in 1985, but was never completed, concerns Jake Hannaford (John Huston), a director whose final days we follow on account of materials accrued from many sources.
Thanks to Welles protégé Peter Bogdanovich, producer Frank Marshall, and others, they are overseeing post-production based on the late director’s “extremely detailed notes and annotated screenplays,” after he finished 40 minutes of the film. They’ve now launched an IndieGoGo campaign to help the process of finishing what needs to be scanned, processed, and completed, including licensing music and producing the score. Said to be the “bare minimum” of what is needed to see the project through, the $2 million goal has been set to acquire over the next 40 days.
We can’t imagine a better way to be part of film history, so with a release planned for 2015 if crowdfunding goes according to plan, check out a video below and head on over to the campaign, which has the support of Wes Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, Clint Eastwood, J.J. Abrams, Noah Baumbach, Edgar Wright, Brad Bird, and more. We’ve also included the trailer for This is Orson Welles, a new documentary on the director by Clara and Julia Kuperberg, premiering at Cannes.