Code 8: The anti-superhero movie that's crowdfunded $1.7 million

Instead of being billionaire superheroes, most ‘specials’ live in poverty and resort to crime

A pitch for a sci-fi movie has so captivated film fans that it has attracted $1.7 million in investment, the most of any Indiegogo campaign so far this year.

It’s got a pretty cool premise, which flies in the face of most of the superhero movies/series currently being made:

‘The film takes place in a world where 4% of the population are born with some type of supernatural ability. Instead of being billionaire superheroes, most ‘specials’ live in poverty and resort to crime, forcing the police to become more militarized.’

Code 8 is the brainchild of brothers Robbie and Stephen Amell, who are best known as Firestorm in The Flash and the title character in Arrow - so they know their supernatural stories.

They’ve already surpassed their sizeable target of $1,500,000, at the time of writing having $1,722,409 to play with.

The story follows a young man with special powers (Amell) struggling to find work as a day laborer. After a dispute over payment, he finds himself in a confrontation with a police officer (Kang) and the autonomous robots backing him up.

The project was put forward with a 10-minute short, but now a feature-length movie can go ahead.

Because of a scheduling conflict, Stephen Amell couldn’t be in the short, but acted as executive producer and will star in the feature.

“I had to jump straight from Turtles back to Arrow,” he explained. “but I’m going to do everything I can to help see this become a full length movie.”

‘We made this short to prove to our fans and to ourselves that we could do something amazing,' the campaign page adds. 'We think it turned out pretty damn well, and now it’s time to hit the big leagues.'

More and more directors/producers are turning to crowdfunding their films, as Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis did with 2013's The Canyons.