Company that started making HAL 9000 replica through crowdfunding is bankrupt

Master Replicas, a company that raised over half a million euros through Indiegogo to make a replica of the HAL 9000 system from the 2001 film: A Space Odyssey, is bankrupt. Production was previously postponed.

Participants of the Indiegogo campaign have been notified that Master Replicas Group is definitively bankrupt. Various participants respond to this on the project page. In July, the company said it needed a reorganization to survive. For this, the American company would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is intended for reorganisations. Now that application appears to have been converted into a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, with which the company has been completely liquidated.

The promised product never went into production and participants now have to go to the company themselves to request a refund. It seems unlikely that the company will be able to comply with such requests. The company has not provided any updates to its Indiegogo page since July.

Master Replicas Group started a crowdfunding project in 2018 to create a replica of the HAL 9000 system from the 2001 sci-fi movie: A Space Odyssey. The proposed product was a bluetooth speaker, with exactly the same design as HAL 9000 from the movie. Before that, the company partnered with Warner Bros. The company was also working on a version with a console and software that would recognize voice commands.

A total of 797 people supported the project. Together they invested 649,259 dollars, which is roughly 550,000 euros. The original promise was that the product would be released in March 2019, but that has already been postponed several times. In April, the company said it had problems with production due to the corona crisis.

Promotional video of the project