Claim: Kristen Bell's is an actress.

Veronica Mars is an American teen noir mystery drama television series created by screenwriter Rob Thomas . The series is set in the fictional town of Neptune , California , and stars Kristen Bell as the eponymous character . The series premiered on September 22 , 2004 , during television network UPN 's final two years , and ended on May 22 , 2007 , after a season on UPN 's successor , The CW , airing for three seasons total . Veronica Mars was produced by Warner Bros. . Television , Silver Pictures Television , Stu Segall Productions , and Rob Thomas Productions . Joel Silver and Rob Thomas were executive producers for the entire run of the series , while Diane Ruggiero was promoted in the third season .   Veronica Mars is a student who progresses from high school to college while moonlighting as a private investigator under the tutelage of her detective father . In each episode , Veronica solves a different stand-alone case while working to solve a more complex mystery . The first two seasons of the series each had a season-long mystery arc , introduced in the first episode of the season and solved in the season finale . The third season took a different format , focusing on smaller mystery arcs that would last the course of several episodes .   Thomas initially wrote Veronica Mars as a young adult novel , which featured a male protagonist ; he changed the gender because he thought a noir piece told from a female point of view would be more interesting and original . Filming began in March 2004 , and the series premiered in September to 2.49 million American viewers . The critically acclaimed first season 's run of 22 episodes garnered an average of 2.5 million viewers per episode in the United States . Veronica Mars appeared on a number of fall television best lists , and garnered several awards and nominations . During the series ' run , it was nominated for two Satellite Awards , four Saturn Awards , five Teen Choice Awards and was featured on AFI 's TV Programs of the Year for 2005 .   Following the cancellation of the series , Thomas wrote a feature film script continuing the series . Warner Bros. opted not to fund the project at the time . On March 13 , 2013 , Bell and Thomas launched a fundraising campaign to produce the film through Kickstarter and attained the $ 2 million goal in less than eleven hours . They accumulated over $ 5.7 million via Kickstarter . The film was released on March 14 , 2014 .