I hate when I make mistakes and I think I've made a big one in putting you all onto the Space Command project. Although it appears to be a going project, it is not what it was sold as. I think the problem is that it raised almost three times what its Kickstarter goal was and the money went to Marc Zicree's head. He's been changing what Space Command is and some of the best people have already left the project because of it.

Several people have told me that Zicree purposefully misled them to keep them on long enough to close the deal. As I understand it Doug Drexler came up with the original idea, but when Zicree's script was written, it pretty much ignored everything they had planned together. The main reason I got so excited about this project in the first place was because Doug, a talented and experienced VFX Supervisor, was on board. Doug has since left the crew over disagreements with Zicree surrounding the changes in direction and a fair amount of dishonesty.

Now, Zicree has stopped any pretense that this was a group vision and is imposing his own ideas. From what I can tell as an investor, he's now trying to make it into a TV series, or at least a Web series, to showcase his writing and directing talents. The project, whatever it will become, will be co-directed by Zicree and Neil Johnson. So who is he? I looked up Johnson's directorial work and was appalled by it. He is at best a one-star director. Zicree himself seems to be lacking the director's eye as well. His directing of World Enough and Time for the Web was high school amateur-hour quality, in spite of some excellent actors.

I went out to meet with Zicree at his roundtable meeting in the San Fernando Valley. It's a wonderful group that he and his wife started about 20 years ago. Various talents in film, from steady-cam operators to screen writers, actors and DPs meet and help each other out with readings and in creating killer demo reels and on other projects. Unfortunately, I left that meeting not at all comfortable about the direction the Space Command project was headed in, especially as Zicree presented it at that particular meeting.

So here's my take: The project continues on and Zicree plans to make at least three-to-four low budget/low production value videos to showcase his writing and directing. There will be no high-quality, well-directed feature film as originally promised. I feel Zicree duped many of us and I apologize for touting the project to my readers. One great sadness is, having met some of the very talented actors that have been cast, I feel they, too, were duped. With inept direction, even the best of actors can't give the performances they intend to deliver.

If I'm wrong about any this, please enlighten me by posting below.