INTO THE STORM
Why we’re doubling down on crowdsourcing in a world gone mad
The world is not just going crazy — it’s getting crazier by the minute. But for storytellers like us, that chaos is fertile ground. It’s time to lean in, not retreat. And that means returning to one of the most powerful creative engines we’ve ever used: crowdsourcing.
This time, however, we go in armed with the scars of experience and a bag of fresh ideas — and the world keeps on feeding us more.
Back in the day, Iron Sky kickstarted (before Kickstarter was a thing, mind you…) an experiment in fan-powered filmmaking. Thousands of fans collaborated with us, the filmmakers, to make a sci-fi comedy about Nazis on the Moon, both participating creatively and financially to make the film happen — not just once, but twice! Iron Sky and Iron Sky The Coming Race are still talked about when referencing crowdfunding successes in film.
Then came Mad Heidi, which pushed the boundary even further, introducing the blockchain model of decentralized fan funding, bringing crowdfunding to the bleeding edge of the 2020s.
Those projects didn’t just build communities — they built movements. And now, it's time for the next phase.
From Prophecy to Production: Iron Sky’s Legacy
Let’s be honest: Iron Sky predicted a lot more than it had any right to. The creeping fascism, the meme politics, the absurdity of power — it was all there in 2012, wrapped in a sci-fi B-movie shell. And today? It reads more like a documentary. Which is why our upcoming projects are leaning back into that prophetic energy, with sharper satire and deeper fan involvement.
We learned a lot from our experiences with Iron Sky, too. Not everything went as we planned, and the fact that Iron Sky Universe went bankrupt back in 2020 and we lost control of the IP — and many fans were left without the promised perk of a DVD — is a stark reminder of that.
We’ve been licking our wounds for a while now, but looking around at the way the world is shaping up, we feel we’re ready to get back into the ring. Inspired by certain rather incredible power shifts in international politics and the war that is in the Zeitgeist, it feels almost like a Bat-signal in the sky for us, calling us to write some batshit crazy, politically incorrect lunatic sci-fi parody of the world we live in. Well, we’re not gonna let you down!
Introducing DEEP RED – A Sci-Fi Trilogy in Soviet Futurism
Someone asked us the other day on Reddit: “Iron Sky needs to be revived, now!” Well, we have something even better — a whole new sci-fi trilogy, but strongly in the same vein as Iron Sky.
We’re calling it Deep Red, and it’s split into three films — Crimson Rise, Crimson Core, and Crimson Fall.
It tells the story of an astronaut from Earth who crash-lands on Mars, and finds a fully functional Soviet utopia there, one that’s been hiding for decades. His arrival throws a spanner in the works of the AI controlling the city of New Moscow, called Deep Red — built out of an old Soviet-era chess computer — and soon, the fate of not only our main characters, astronaut Simon Nash and Soviet Martian seismologist Katya Dedov, but of all mankind is at stake.
Yeah, we’re sourcing a lot of elements of satire from current-day politics, our proven prophetical abilities, and of course, our beloved genre of science fiction films. Visually, we love brutalism, Soviet retro-futurism and propaganda artwork, so the look sheet is pretty much set. It’s gonna be a wild ride — a Red Menace in Space.
And the best part? The original team that created Iron Sky is back (at least, mostly)! Timo Vuorensola is directing, Tero Kaukomaa producing, and Samuli Torssonen is in charge of the VFX — and even Jarmo Puskala, the father of the idea of Iron Sky, is back in the team, helping us prophesy the future — and Laibach has already shown interest in doing the music!
But we’re also bringing in some American muscle to the writing team — writer Andrew Cosby (Hellboy, Eureka) is working with Timo to make sense of the madness of the story and joins us as the screenwriter. So yeah, we’re in good hands as we move forward!
Crowdfunding as a tool to fight the financial chaos
In addition to crazy politics, traditional film funding has taken a hit — or several — in the last few years. First, COVID-19 shut down the whole industry for a year, followed by the Hollywood strikes that slowed down or killed a ton of projects. Then LA was struck by fires, and the final nail in the coffin of the ‘traditional model’ was Trump’s threats of tariffs on ‘foreign-made’ films.
Funding a film nowadays is as scary and hard as walking into dark woods unarmed. You never know what’s lurking behind the next tree.
So, we decided to look back at what we said we’d never do again — crowdfunding. After our experiences with our movies, we learned one thing about crowdfunding: that it’s damn hard, and you’re bound to make mistakes, as there’s no real formula to it. Much of the time, you have to wing it at best, no matter how much you plan ahead.
But at the same time, we’ve done it now a couple of times, and every time, successfully. Iron Sky and Iron Sky The Coming Race raised altogether about €4 million, and Mad Heidi, which Tero produced and put together crowdfunding model, followed with another €2 million. We’ve also funded films the traditional way, and yeah, when it works, it works — but the fact is, today it’s rarer and rarer to get a project off the ground.
So, we decided to go back to what we know — but learn from our mistakes, and study what the world is doing nowadays. Cryptocurrencies are dominating the public discussion, and our plan is to take what we learned with Mad Heidi — the decentralized, blockchain-based system and introduce a token that will form the basis of our crowdfunding.
This allows people to own the IP transparently, invest safely in the film, follow the eventual revenue streams that are automated and unalterable once set in place, and get their funding turned into potential profit.
We believe in this shit, but we’re not expecting you to. If you’d rather kick back and just watch what these clowns from Finland are now up to, feel free to. Either way, it’s not gonna be boring — that much we can tell you.
“I’m doing my part, too!”
Love that quote from Starship Troopers? Yeah, well, we do too. And based on that idea, we’re inviting the first pioneers to step onboard the starship to Mars and start building a utopia — together with us.
We’re launching our Deep Red Pioneers Initiative, which invites all of you crazy history buffs, science nerds, propagandists, AI enthusiasts, conspiracy wackos (not the bad kind, though — you know… we still believe America landed on the Moon and that there are no lizard people running the country… or, is there?) — and all kinds of people interested in building a Soviet Utopia with us, on Mars.
I won’t pitch it further here, but do go check out more about the Deep Red Pioneers here:
Stay tuned!
I know — we’re still keeping things a little cryptic (or crypto-ic?) for now. But if anything here sparks your curiosity, stay tuned for our journey to the Red Planet! Follow us on social media or hop onto our brand-new mailing list — you’ll be the first to know when we make touchdown.
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Comrades, to the cosmos – and beyond!
In solidarity,
Deep Red
