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Joss Whedon's Firefly Coming To The Big Screen
lhouk281 writes "According to this article in the Hollywood Reporter, Universal is turning Firefly into a movie. Firefly lives!" This show deserved a chance to run a full season. If this comes out, I'll sure be there opening weekend.
'Firefly' lands in film afterlife
Joss Whedon
By Zorianna Kit and Chris Gardner
The short-lived TV series "Firefly" is moving to the big screen. After taking his "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" feature film and turning it into a successful TV series, Joss Whedon is about to do the reverse with another one of his creations. Whedon has teamed with Universal Pictures to turn "Firefly," a TV cult favorite, into a feature film.
In addition to having adapted it for the big screen, Whedon will also make his feature directorial debut with the project. Plans are to see "Firefly" go into production in first-quarter 2004.
Universal recently acquired the rights to "Firefly" from 20th Century Fox Television, where Whedon's Mutant Enemy Inc. production company has a television deal.
The action-adventure series was set 500 years in the future and centered on a crew aboard a spaceship. The feature version will incorporate the mythology from the show but will take on a more epic feel. Whedon hopes to enlist the entire cast to come back for the feature, depending on their previous commitments, with new characters added as well.
Whedon is producing the film through his Mutant Enemy Inc. along with studio-based producer Barry Mendell. Mendell, a former agent at UTA, used to represent Whedon. Mutant Enemy president Christopher Buchanan is executive producing. Universal production president Mary Parent is shepherding the project.
"Ever since the show went off the air, our fan base has grown even more," Buchanan said. "We've had tremendous outpouring from the U.S. and Canada as well as the U.K., which just finished a run of 'Firefly' over there. Every comic book and sci-fi convention has had a 'Firefly' presence since the show first aired."
For the series, which ran this past season, Whedon produced 15 hours of television, including a two-hour episode. Three shows never aired on Fox but will likely be featured on the series' DVD release, due out in December. Buchanan said fans created such a demand that DVD presales on Amazon.com sold out within 24 hours.
Whedon, repped by CAA, continues to be executive producer of "Angel," which he created. His feature film screenplay credits include "Titan A.E.," "Alien: Resurrection" and "Toy Story."
The IT section color scheme sucks.
> Anyone know when the first "season" is coming out on DVD?
Since I RTFA, I saw that:
> Three shows never aired on Fox but will likely be featured on the series' DVD release, due out in December.
Ceri
You sell out pre-orders by knowing how many copies the publisher is going to print, and of that number know how many copies you are going to be allocated and then discover that that number is less than the number of copies that people have pre-ordered. At that point you have two choices. Tell people that they are going to have to look elsewhere for copies, or tell the publisher that you would be happy to sell a lot more copies for them, perhaps even let them know that the number of copies they allocated to you went to pre-orders the first day, and well, it sure is nice doing business with people who have a product that our customers are interested in.
-Rusty
You never know...
You only watched the first episode "Train Job" didn't you?
Leave it to fox to run the worst episode first and the pilot episode that introduces you to everyone last
The rest of the series was much better than train job, and if fox had promoted it, led off with the pilot, and aired it in order it likely could have made at least till the end of the season.
The original was goofy, and somewhat likeable, but not exactly what I'd call "excellent".
Wheadon wrote the script for the original, and was pretty much horrified - or, at least, very disappointed - with the end result. When the opportunity came to turn the film into a series, he insisted on retaining ultimate creative control over the direction of the show. It was a smart move - he had great instincts, and the show rarely stumbled when he was responsible for the content. (Episodes written by others, on the other hand, didn't always turn out so well.)
If the guy responsible for both the movie and the series says that the series is much better than the original, I don't think it's so strange to agree with him.
A lot of people dont understand why Futurama got the axe while the Simpsons endure. They dont appreciate how much went into Futurama.
Adult Swim has been putting little factoids into their commercial bumpers about it. It cost something like 2 million dollars per episode. The opening sequence has something like a dozen layers of animation and took months to complete. The animation in Futurama was really above-par, with multilayered hand animated characters mixed in with CGI and special effects and whatnot. It was all so subtle, though, that people didnt get it.
Cartoon Network was negotiating with Groenig about continuing Futurama, but the price tag was just way to high. They'd have to animate it like any other cartoon, which would kill the shows feel and mood.
The good news, however, is that they've struck an agreement for new Family Guy episodes.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Starting Monday Space will be showing the entire Firefly run in Canada. Check your local listings and be sure to tune in. Give it a chance, it rocks!
Serve Gonk.
The use of horses on some colony planets was well explained in the series pilot. Unfortunately, the network did not air the pilot until the end of the series.
According to the pilot, the colonization of some planets involved little more than dumping the settlers, some livestock, and some basic tools in the middle of the wilderness. Although some colonies were extermely advanced, with high tech and large populations, many were still barren frontiers with a mix of farmers, miners, and other suppliers of raw materials.
1. Prostitutes will never be the top females in the social hierarchy of any civilization.
I don't think that was implied. I do think that in some ways making prostitution a legal legit profession is a legit angle.
2. If you fly a spaceship to colonize a new planet, you will never have to drive a chuckwagon pulled by a team of horses to get across a babbling brook on that planet.
Why not? Part of terraforming a new world I would THINK you would be importing lifeforms that you would choose to live with as part of creating your own eco system. Machines require high tech and tend to break down where horses breed. Why bother with the expence of importing machines when you can use existing forms of power.
If the issue is over population, then terraforming a planet and just tossing people on it would create the need to use every available resource in order to sustain the population, which would include animal labor.
3. Swearing in Chinese is geeky.
I often wondered about this point. Is this out of respect for the american west who's growth was possible in part due to Chinese labor, or the fact that China has the highest population on the planet earth and more likely to invest tons of money in space exploration to solve its lack of land per person issue.
I'm thinking it was a population issue, and learning a few words when you have a 1 in 6 chance of the random person being a Chinese national makes a lot of sence.
No more nor less geeky then watching someone from another nation saying *shit*.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
a) How many chapters was it going to be? He writes pretty hefty books. A buck a chapter may have ended up more than a hardcover. Definitely more than a softcover.
b) How many people looked at a chapter out of the novelty, never intending to pay for it, or even look at the second chapter? I expect that would account for the bulk of the non-payers. The 75% was doomed to failure.
c) I generally don't read King, but I heard that that book wasn't one of his best efforts.
d) Who wants to wait for a week or two between chapters when reading a book? Especially if the author makes no guarantee to ever finish the book? We're all to used to it in the TV or movie series world (and those formats usually are designed to minimize the problems with it), but it is different with books.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
No, he's talking about episode 3x09, "The Wish". The one with evil vampire Xander.
*snif* I miss the series the way it used to be. Too bad the animated version got axed.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Actually, 2 episodes were pulled: the first was "Earshot", with the character of Johnathan cooped up in the school bell tower with a sniper rifle. This is the episode that had Whedon's approval to postpone.
He had a major fit, however, over their delaying the airing of Graduation Part II, it was a season finale of all things !
http://www.post-gazette.com/tv/19990722buffy2.asp
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
For those who didn't watch the first episode aired (which was not the pilot, btw) because the premise seemed too hokey (cattle rustling and train robbing in outer space), I will explain this reference.
Mal, the captain of the spaceship and leader of our motley band of, shall we say, less than completely law-abiding heros, managed to foil The Bad Guy's Plan and capture a number of the Evil Henchmen in the process. Now, part of the hook of this episode was that Mal accepted a contract to deliver a load of goods to The Bad Guy after "liberating" it (from the aforementioned train), but then found out that he could not live with the consequences of doing so. In order to appease The Bad Guy, Mal tried to return the payment that he had received prior to releasing the Evil Henchmen. To paraphrase:
Mal: (to Henchman #1) Here's the money back. Go tell The Bad Guy that this makes us square.
Henchman #1: Nothing will make us square! I will hunt you down and kill you like the dog you are! Taste the bitter nectar of my vengance, you worm!!!
Mal: Darn, and I thought that we could make a deal. (stage direction: Mal pushes Henchman #1 into the intake port of the nearby idling jet(?) engine, turning him into a convieniently-off-camera crimson spray).
Mal: (to Henchman #2) Here's the money back. Go tell The Bad Guy that this makes us square.
Henchman #2: No problem, big guy!
I must let you all know that this one exchange turned my otherwise-unimpressed wife into an instant rabid fan of the series.