'Veronica Mars' hopes for rebirth on silver screen

In an 1893 story called "The Final Solution," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sent the very popular Sherlock Holmes plummeting over the Reichenbach Falls, thus ridding the world of its greatest detective and Conan Doyle of his greatest distraction -- or so he thought. Fan outcry was so great that the author was forced to revive Holmes.

This week, a more contemporary detective gets a similar remake.

"Veronica Mars" -- the feature film -- opens Friday, based on the 2004-07 TV series about a spunky high school sleuth and her existential anxiety. Kristen Bell reprises her role as the tiny blond gumshoe; the show's creator, Rob Thomas, makes his big-screen directing debut.

The show had cult status and an avid fan base, which, like others through the years, thought they could reverse history. It also had failing ratings and a production company (Warner Bros.) that seemed to want to forget it as quickly as possible.

Enter Kickstarter. When "Veronica Mars" the movie opens, it will mark one year since the start of a crowdfunding campaign that raised $2 million in less than a day and changed the mind of Warner. Eventually, almost $6 million was raised on Kickstarter, along with a great deal of awareness about a show that had been fading from view.

The object of the film is to make the fans happy, obviously -- the fans being its financiers. "Rob is one of the best TV writers that's ever existed," Bell told CNN. "He knows what people want to see, and he gives them that. He's like a really, really, really good father."