Only a year ago it was just a cancelled TV series. Then it was suddenly a hugely successful Kickstarter project, and now the finished Veronica Mars movie is almost upon us. Warner Bros. have released the first trailer for Kristen Bell's former-teen detective cinema upgrade.
The film finds former teen detective Veronica headed back to Neptune, California, after ten years away. In the meantime she's become a corporate lawyer and shacked up with lurrve interest Piz (Chris Lowell). What's drawing her home, however, is the plight of former flame Logan (Jason Dohring), who's accused of killing his pop star girlfriend. The points of the old love triangle between Veronica, Piz and Logan are soon sharp again, and Veronica finds herself investigating her first mystery in a decade.
For the unititiated, there are shades of Grosse Pointe Blank in the school reunion thread, and echoes of One For The Money in the detective's-old-flame-in-trouble hook. But for those already invested in Veronica's previous three years' worth of adventures, the film looks to be a canny reacquaintance with the material: moving the characters believably forward, but still providing plenty of callbacks to what worked before.
Creator and showrunner Rob Thomas is the film's director, and while the initial plans were only for a limited release, Veronica Mars will open "wider" in the States on March 14. There's no date for the UK so far.