When we started working on Iron Sky, I already had a dream in my head: to create a full-blown science fiction trilogy. Growing up with Star Wars, Indiana Jones and other great adventure sagas, it felt like the most natural way to tell a big, ambitious story.

Our first attempt didn’t quite get there. Iron Sky became a two-film franchise instead of the trilogy we envisioned, which was personally a big disappointment. In the years that followed I dabbled in ads, made a few forgettable projects for others, and tried to find my direction again. Six years after Iron Sky: The Coming Race, Tero and I decided it was time to return to what we love: thinking big, working progressively, and building films together with the crowd—outside of the traditional system.

Iron Sky was originally intended to come out as a trilogy

The breakthrough came with a crazy but powerful idea: make all three movies in one go.
One pre-production. One shoot. One post-production. And most importantly: one funding.

From a traditional perspective, this sounds impossible. Normally, you make one film, finance it from scratch, release it, and only if it succeeds do you start thinking about the sequel. Each step is risky, time-consuming, and expensive and the whole story is in danger to collapse and never be finished if anything goes wrong along the way.

We thought: why follow that path? Others have shown it can be done differently. Peter Jackson famously shot The Lord of the Rings trilogy in one continuous production. James Cameron is doing the same with the Avatar sequels. Of course, these are multi-hundred-million-dollar projects. Our aim is different: to do it smarter, leaner, and more efficiently—something we proved possible with Iron Sky.

That’s why we’re building the Deep Red trilogy—Crimson Rise, Crimson Core and Crimson Fall—as a single, continuous production.

This strategy lets us, for example, to build sets, props, costumes, and assets only once. Hire cast and crew for one concentrated push, and streamline pre- and post-production, especially with our LED-screen based shooting approach.

It won’t be easy—I’m sure we’ll be cursing ourselves along the way—but in the end, we’ll have not one but three finished films: a full saga with a beginning, middle, and epic finale, ready to roll out to audiences one per year.

And the best part: we only need to finance it once. While the total budget is bigger, it’s nowhere near “budget × 3.” By combining resources and avoiding the waste of starting and stopping three separate times, we can save enormously.

We’re also not going back to traditional funding. Every time we’ve handed the keys to outsiders, things have gone wrong fast. This time we’re keeping full control—from script to release. That means we dictate the distribution terms, decide when and how the films come out, and ensure they reach audiences in the way we believe works best.

Meanwhile, traditional film financing is collapsing. Presales are dead, minimum guarantees are gone, national film funds are being cut (Finland just slashed its film foundation budget by 30%), and private investment is nearly impossible. Unless you’re making the safest, most predictable project, the system offers nothing.

So we’re taking matters into our own hands. After years of experimenting with alternative models, we’ve reached a bold conclusion: crowdfunding isn’t dead—it’s just getting started.

Our plan is to merge modern financing networks with filmmaking in a way nobody has done before. We’re launching 20 million Deep Red Tokens (DRED), a blockchain-based funding model that allows fans, online communities, and crypto supporters to directly finance the trilogy. It’s transparent, digital, tradeable, and fully outside the old system. Of course, it carries risks, like any crypto project—but we’re building it on solid ground.

We’ve already opened a pre-round of investment for our closest circle—fans, friends, and collaborators. If you’re interested in joining early, drop us a message at invest@deepredfilm.com to request the whitepaper with all the details.

The Deep Red White Paper describes in detail the financing plan of the trilogy.

At the same time, we’re gearing up to shoot the first promo for Deep Red. Our plan is to film it late this year or early next, and release it in spring 2026 to launch the crowdfunding and token campaign.

It’s been an incredible start. We’re thrilled to see Iron Sky fans returning to support this new adventure, and we’ll keep you updated as things progress.

Timo Vuorensola
Director, Deep Red trilogy

THREE MOVIES, ONE FUNDING – OUR KEY STRATEGY FOR DEEP RED

The creative contract