Two things reignited Felicia Day’s passion for The Guild: A musical and Covid-19. Now, more than a decade after the final episode aired, the show about the lives of online MMO guild members is returning as a movie, with a Kickstarter launching on July 20. We spoke to the gloriously geeky actor and writer about The Guild’s big return, her scriptwriting process, and why she turned down a Hollywood offer in favor of public crowdfunding.
Day has long been open about her experience with burnout and overwork, which caused her to step away from her business Geek & Sundry in the mid-2010s. Creating a musical for The Guild helped her get her mojo back. “Working through the characters and reacquainting myself with them, five or six years after I had last written about them, I started to overcome the burnout, and I started to get enthusiastic again,” she says.
Then, over the pandemic, Day invited The Guild cast to play games on Twitch – everything from RPGs to Among Us – and everything clicked just as it had in the past. “To be able to approach it from joy versus ‘oh my God, we’ve got to get videos out’ was such a renewal in my faith in the show.”
So Felicia Day already had the glimmerings of an idea for some sort of 20th anniversary celebration, and was excited when she got the call (or the email, actually) from Hollywood suggesting exactly that.
That is until she exactly spoke to them…
“They were like, ‘Yeah, we’d love you to reboot the show with younger actors’. And I was so angry. I was so angry, and then and there, I was like, ‘No, Hollywood. You suck! You’ve rejected me for 20 years, and now you want to take my baby away from me? Absolutely not! I am going to make this movie on my own terms, and the fans are going to help me.'”
Day says every decision for The Guild movie was made with delighting fans in mind, but she keeps her cards pretty close to her chest. For instance, here’s her response to how the show has been adapted for big 2026, now MMOs are no longer the goliaths they used to be.
“I thought long and hard about how to make it relevant for today and you will be happy, I promise. And that’s all I’m going to say about it. I acknowledge that the times have changed and the characters have changed too. So what happens will be very pleasing to everybody, and very current.” Mysterious…
Day says that the script for The Guild: Reunion movie is the most enjoyable thing she’s ever written.
“That was because I started taking oil painting classes a couple years ago, and the process of oil painting taught me that everything is progress, everything is step-by-step,” she explains. “It allowed me to wander a lot. And yeah, I wrote a very bloated script. I would never have done that before… but allowing yourself to find things is such a delight.
“Then I just spent a long time editing it down. I just did another pass. We did a read through in February to just make sure it was good before I asked people to support it. It was very good, but then I did a massive rewrite. I changed a lot of the character arcs. I refined it a lot. I added some characters. I took some away, and it’s a tighter, better script now. And that’s gonna keep going till the day we shoot.”
The actor says that she has no long-term goals for The Guild movie and will be perfectly happy if she goes back to Twitch streaming and writing books afterwards. Of course, every Kickstarter has to have stretch goals, so there’ll certainly be bonus stuff for the fans, assuming it brings in enough bucks.
Since The Guild is already the most-followed Kickstarter for a movie, chances seem pretty good on that front. However, Day points out that movies are expensive, and that the initial target will be ‘substantial’. “It was kind of a wake up call, even to me, to figure out the budget and needing to shoot in Los Angeles for the cast and for any cameos I may or may not have”.
Much as I pleaded, and much as it was clear Felicia Day was bursting to talk about it, I couldn’t get her to spill any big secrets about the movie’s character arcs and plot. Rats! You’ll just have to check out the Kickstarter page for yourself, as she promises on July 20 “the gloves are coming off!” Also, apparently there’s a free pin if you sign up early and then back the project.
While we can offer no such shiny metal trinkets, we also reckon you should join the Wargamer Discord. It’s the place to be if you want to stay up to date with what’s happening in tabletop land!
Source: Wargamer
