A Kickstarter campaign for Get Me Doug Jones launched this week, giving fans a first look at a feature-length documentary that has been filming since last year and is built around the actor’s long run through film and television. The project is being directed by William Conlin and produced by Derek Maki.
The campaign arrives with a list of interviewees that already reads like a casting call from a genre fan’s dream. Ron Perlman, Noah Wyle, Bette Midler, Harvey Guillén, Sonequa Martin-Green, David Ajala, Jayne Brook and Anthony Rapp are among those who have taken part so far.
The documentary will trace Doug Jones’s path from early work on Mac Tonight, Batman Returns and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to later credits that helped make him one of the most recognizable performers under layers of makeup and prosthetics. Those projects include Hellboy I & II, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Star Trek: Discovery, What We Do in the Shadows, Pan’s Labyrinth and Thee Shape of Water.
Jones is also described as the performer who played Saru on Star Trek: Discovery and as an actor known for inhabiting creatures and aliens in film and television. The documentary is being framed as a look at his life, his career and the relationships that have shaped both, with family, friends and fans part of the story rather than an afterthought.
The Kickstarter is also leaning hard into that fan base. Rewards include a Funko Pop Saru, signed scripts from shows Jones has appeared in, signed photos from his films and one of the only remaining original Saru full face prosthetics from Star Trek: Discovery.
Supporters can also send in photos of themselves with Jones to be included in the final credits, a touch that makes the campaign feel less like a standard fundraising push and more like an effort to turn the audience into part of the finished film. That may be the point: this is not just a documentary about a performer with a distinctive face on screen, but about the community that has followed him through decades of roles, from monsters and aliens to the more human business of being recognized, remembered and sought out by fans.
The question now is whether the campaign can convert that loyalty into enough backing to carry the project through postproduction and into release. For a film built on the loyalty of genre audiences, the answer starts with whether those audiences decide they want their names in the credits as much as they want the story on screen.
