Utah Crowd-Funding: All this and Kevin Sorbo too

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

This week's Utah Crowd-Funding project will be a herculean effort — with a former Hercules.

The science-fiction movie "Survivor" was shot in Utah, starring Kevin Sorbo ("Hercules: The Legendary Journeys") and Danielle Chuchran ("The 12 Dogs of Christmas"), and written and directed by John Lyde — whose resume ranges from holiday inspirational films ("Christmas Oranges," "Christmas for a Dollar") to horror ("Osombie," which posited a zombie Osama bin Laden).

Here's the film's plot, as described on its Kickstarter page:

"Just as young Kate Mitra discovers a habitable planet for what's left of humankind, a meteor strike destroys their space craft, crash-landing them on a mysterious barren world. As Kate, Captain Hunter, and the other survivors gather, they are ambushed by a band of post-apocalyptic warriors and mutated savages. Kate awakens bound in a cave, trapped by flesh-eating cave creatures and separated from her friends, and must learn to trust the planet's mysterious humanoids in order to outrun, outsmart and outfight hordes of bloodthirsty aliens and an enormous mutated wolf creature, and rescue her friends and her captain before they are all eaten alive."

So what's not to love?

(Chuchran plays Kate; Sorbo is Captain Hunter.)

The Kickstarter campaign aims to raise $25,000 for post-production work — such as visual effects of outer space, as well as "a giant mutated wolf" that Chuchran must fight. So far, with 24 days left to go, the campaign has raised $22,417, or 89 percent of the goal.

Donors can get everything from an mp3 of the movie's theme song (for a $1 pledge) to a special screening in your home town with a Q-and-A with one of the producers live and in person (for a $10,000 pledge).

If you have a crowd-funding project you'd like mentioned on The Cricket blog, email it to: spmeans@sltrib.com. Be sure to put "crowd funding" in the subject line.