Joss Whedon Is Creating a Sci-Fi Drama For Fox

grafikhugh writes "An article on Yahoo! News states that Joss Whedon, the creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel", is close to closing a deal with Fox. He will create thirteen episodes of a "Anti-Trek" Sci-Fi Drama to be a big player in Fox's fall 2002 line up. Its seems Whedon wants to avoid aliens as the big bad, and concentrate on making "scary-ass" humans Living in a "Dark Place"." It's also worth noting the IMDB entries for a possible buffy spin-off Ripper and an animated Buffy.

Comments

I only have one problem with this..

[Dimensio]

...with Joss's work on Angel, Fray, the animated show and the limited work he does on Buffy (since Marti Noxon does most of it now), how is he going to manage everything?

Science Action

[svara]

I only hope that this will become a real _science_ fiction thing with some action... not a pseudo-science space-soap like Star Trek.

Ripper..

[jspectre]

Is a series filming in England about the character "Rupert Giles." Ripper was his nickname as a teen. The series is supposedly about his years growing up and training to be a watcher..

It's been long discussed on alt.tv.buffy-the-vampire-slayer.

Re:Ripper..

[mbourgon]

Actually, what I read from Joss (one of his posts) was that it was a story about a man investigating haunted houses, supernatural and otherwise. And it's going to be hard for Anthony Stewart Head to play a teen version of, well, himself.

Part of it was brought on by ASH's wish to go back to England, and apparently the Beeb had a long-standing "we want!" for something of Joss'. It ought to be interesting. The big question is if the Beeb will shoot themselves in the foot and not let it show in the states. If not, I think the a.b.m.b-v-s newsgroup's going to be the U.S.'s only shot at watching it.

I don't think I believe him...

[medcalf]

I can make people that are scarier than anything you can put in latex.

Scarier than Janet Reno in Latex?

Is there a way to mod me down for breaking the mental image rule?

Dude

[wiredog]

Some of us are trying to eat lunch!

Alien Resurrection

[rnb]

Admittedly, I've never seen Buffy or Angel, or whatever those shows are, but I'm not sure I can ever forgive this guy for Alien Resurrection. Alien 3 pretty much destroyed an otherwise excellent series and then it was followed by something that could have set the series back on track but instead was just ... well, most of us saw what it was.

Yech.

Re:Alien Resurrection

[amnesty]

Joss Whedon hated Alien Resurrection as well. His scripts are written be to delivered in a very specific way, and many directors just don't 'get' it. Here's a clip from an interview, talking about his work on X-Men and leading into Alien Resurrection.

JW: X-Men was very interesting in that, by that time, I actually had a reputation in television. I was actually somebody. People stopped thinking I was John Sweden on the phone. And then, in X-Men, not only did they throw out my script and never tell me about it; they actually invited me to the read-through, having thrown out my entire draft without telling me. I was like, "Oh, that's right! This is the movies! The writer is shit in the movies!" I'll never understand that. I have one line left in that movie. Actually, there are a couple of lines left in that are out of context and make no sense, or are delivered so badly, so terribly... There's one line that's left the way I wrote it.

O: Which is?

JW: "'It's me.' 'Prove it.' 'You're a dick.'" Hey, it got a laugh.

O: It's funny that the only lines I really remember from that movie are that one and Storm's toad comment.

JW: Okay, which was also mine, and that's the interesting thing. Everybody remembers that as the worst line ever written, but the thing about that is, it was supposed to be delivered as completely offhand. [Adopts casual, bored tone.] "You know what happens when a toad gets hit by lightning?" Then, after he gets electrocuted, "Ahhh, pretty much the same thing that happens to anything else." But Halle Berry said it like she was Desdemona. [Strident, ringing voice.] "The same thing that happens to everything eeelse!" That's the thing that makes you go crazy. At least "You're a dick" got delivered right. The worst thing about these things is that, when the actors say it wrong, it makes the writer look stupid. People assume that the line... I listened to half the dialogue in Alien 4, and I'm like, "That's idiotic," because of the way it was said. And nobody knows that. Nobody ever gets that. They say, "That was a stupid script," which is the worst pain in the world. I have a great long boring story about that, but I can tell you the very short version. In Alien 4, the director changed something so that it didn't make any sense. He wanted someone to go and get a gun and get killed by the alien, so I wrote that in and tried to make it work, but he directed it in a way that it made no sense whatsoever. And I was sitting there in the editing room, trying to come up with looplines to explain what's going on, to make the scene make sense, and I asked the director, "Can you just explain to me why he's doing this? Why is he going for this gun?" And the editor, who was French, turned to me and said, with a little leer on his face, [adopts gravelly, smarmy, French-accented voice] "Because eet's een the screept." And I actually went and dented the bathroom stall with my puddly little fist. I have never been angrier. But it's the classic, "When something goes wrong, you assume the writer's a dork." And that's painful.

Actor still, still seeking work...

[CleverNickName]

Hey, at least our names rhyme...imagine the Project Mayhem we could pull on the set...

How 'bout it, Joss?

Re:Actor still, still seeking work...

[Syberghost]

This is supposed to be the anti-Trek, right?

So, what, you'll play a character the fans like? :-)

Anti-Trek

[Proaxiom]

If Star Trek and Anti-Trek attempt to occupy the same time slot, do they both vanish in a brilliant flash of light?

Ripper

[rlp]

Actually the story of a person who purchases CD audio disks and converts them to MP3 files. In the TV show he is pursued by a team of operatives from a sinister organization known as the R.I.A.A.

The Anti-Cliche Man

[fm6]

In a way, this development was sort of inevitable. There's a big market for SF on TV. But the genre's in a real rut. Most shows are invented by some semi-literate hack with one Big Idea that runs dry after a few episodes. On the rare instances where somebody has done something really creative and interesting, the project is soon taken over by media suits who judge story quality by the number of explosions, shootouts, and chase scenes.

Joss Whedon is the antithesis of all this. Not that he's any great literary genius. He just makes up ordinary, low-brow stories. But he hates hackwork, and he hates repeating himself. Most of all, he hates cliches.

You can see this in his biggest success, Buffy. The premise makes no sense at all, except as a kind of anti-cliche. It takes the biggest horror cliche of all, the helpless, clueless, personality-deficient teenage bimbo, and turns it on its head. Critics love to talk about how Buffy keeps "raising the bar", with ever stranger and more suprising stories and chracters. But really all that's happening is Whedon telling his writers, over and over, "No, we did that already."

So is good news, not just for TV SF, but for the whole genre. As bad as the idea-deficient Hollywood SF writers are, they're easier to take than all those bloated-epic writers who think that a clever idea is all you need. Somebody needs to teach all these people the basics of good storytelling, and Whedon is just the person to do it.

Latex is scary?

[ellem]

``There'll be scary-ass humans,'' he said. ``I can make people that are scarier than anything you can put in latex.'' --Joss W

What the Hell is this guy talking about? I say get Charisma Carpenter, Sarah Michelle Gellar and
Alyson Hannigan in latex and have them make-out for a half hour every week.

CC as Wonder Woman
SMG as Cat Woman
AH as Batgirl

I'm watching that show right now... in my head... ohhh soo nice... latex... mmmmm

Re:Buffy and Angel?

[amnesty]

You know, I would have agreed with you maybe a year ago. Who would want to watch a show called Buffy: The Vampire Slayer anyway??

But then one of my friends started raving about how good this series is, and he's the kind of guy who doesn't watch a show just for the good looking women.

Slowly he managed to convince me to watch the show. While season 1 was pretty bad and gave the necessary backstory, season 2 and 3 gave me some of the best hours of TV I've watched.

Angel is one of the best villians I have ever seen in my life. Sure, Darth Vader killed a lot of people and Kevin Spacey in Se7en made you want to throw up, but Angel was cruel, vicious and stabbed you in the heart with every mean word he said. The buildup of Angel as a good guy beforehand is what creates the intense emotional weight of Angel as a bad guy.

Meanwhile Xander, Willow, Oz, and all the regulars have such a great ensemble together. Joss Whedon gives them some great, witty dialogue and you find these people would be people that you'd actually want to be friends with.

This is a show that never sells out for an easy plot. When the show has twists, turns and surprises, it earns it. Even in all the silliness of the episode Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered, where Amy's love spell screws up and makes all the girls go after Xander, this act has repercussions. Willow is upset afterwards for how she was forced to act with Xander, for example.

Hush, an episode where the characters can't speak, nominated for an Emmy.

The Body, an episode where Buffy's mother dies, and the BEST episode ever for portrayal of a death. Many long cuts, slow scenes, very realistic, and no music through the entire show.

Recently, the Buffy Musical was a great achievement, even UPN allowed the show to run 9 minutes longer than the usual 44 minutes for an episode.

The show sounds really cheesy, the ideas really campy, but it never takes itself too seriously and makes fun of itself a lot. Throws in some excellently written emotional plotlines and earns the audiences' feelings. Even actors who want to get on the show usually have to convince their Agents. "You want to be on Buffy the WHAT??"

And the spin-off is quality. Angel can be described as the best stuff on TV you're not watching.

If you're not convinced, check out Buffy creator/writer/producer/director/superhero Joss Whedon's interview on The Onion and you can see how intense and visonary this guy is.

Re:Buffy and Angel?

[Syberghost]

Come on... not to troll or flame, but these shows only have popularity cause of one thing:
Great looking chicks.

Then why aren't other shows with MORE hot chicks more popular with the same audience?

Buffy draws an audience that includes a lot of straight girls. Dawson's Creek isn't very popular with straight guys 24-45.

In short, "not to troll or flame" was bullshit, you're trolling.

Why we watch Buffy

[scott1853]

Ok guys, enough is enough. There's plenty of comments on the Buffy show lately. I think we can all drop the act.

You know what I mean. We're not watching it for any sci-fi or horror reasons. It's obvious.

Buffy will date freaks.

And the lesbians don't hurt either

I have three words for you...

[Brendan Byrd]

Joseph Michael Straczynski.

If there were more epic stories like Babylon 5 on TV, it would actually be worth watching.

Actually, Farscape and Stargate SG-1 aren't too bad, either. Sure, there are plenty of real bad sci-fi shows, but this are all on the Big 5 (NBC/ABC/CBS/FOX/UPN), where corporate marketting reigns. On the channels that don't have to rely on people with B&W TVs using an attenna to get their sitcoms, they have enough intelligence to find shows based on good stories, and not a short-term big-hit injection (ie: good pilots, bad episodes) to get their finacial high.

Series like Babylon 5 and Farscape survive because it's a good long-term story that lasts a long time (and gets people hooked for a good amount of Nelson cash flow), and the channels that host them are willing to let them go past their 13 episodes, even if they aren't suddenly the #1 show in the universe. (The main corporates just won't settle for anything less, anymore. If you don't believe me, just look at UPNs first season, where they canned EVERY SINGLE SHOW except for their Voyager cash cow.)

Hey Wil

[fm6]

It's easy to miss the fact that CleverNickName is the /. handle for the Wil Wheaton, this week's poster child for Fame Doesn't Pay the Rent. Hey Will, how about a distinctive sig? Otherwise your long series of "still seeking work" posts (which I hope represent self-deprecating humor) will be overlooked!

I'm tempted to ask why they didn't bring in Wesley to get Voyager home. He was the expert on Going Real Fast, after all. But I won't ask. I suspect an honest answer would get you sued!