That is a good question, and I'm not sure I have a good answer. Kickstarter and Patreon seem to be doing pretty well, but AFAIK they haven't been used to such a scale so they may not work for this.

This is a big issue and our economy is largely suffering for it, but old-world thinking about treating digital goods like physical goods is a poor response.

Veronica Mars movie was made through kickstarter way back when. That was successful, and specifically covered cost of production. I can't remember the donation system, but most tiers got free digital copy of the film.

It was a total failure at release though, since WB didn't make it available DRM-free[1]. It's a counter example of how to do things. The end result was - never trust WB.

A proper example would be something like Kung Fury[2].

1. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140314/23410326583/warne...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury

Crowd fund production