Firefly Movie Gets The Green Light

An anonymous reader writes "According to FireflyFans.net and Ain't It Cool News, Universal has greenlit production of 'Serenity,' the motion picture based on Joss Whedon's cancelled TV series 'Firefly.' Both sites point to an article from Variety that says the film will start production in June, and be ready for release in 2005." The informative Whedonesque weblog is also monitoring developments regarding this much-deserved resurrection.

Comments

firefly

[panxerox]

OIC firefly is good enough for a dvd set and good enough for a movie but not good enough for a series. Sometimes I wonder about the people making the decisions. Are they making a decision to not do a series because of business reasons or just well because they say so and those weenie viewers arent going to change our minds because they might get it in their heads that they matter. Yes I'm bitter. Its like they say "come here viewers come check out this great new series!" then they go "SUCKERS !! haha no show for you !!".

Re:firefly

[eatenn]

"OIC firefly is good enough for a dvd set and good enough for a movie but not good enough for a series."

Financially speaking, I would say that Firefly may actually be better suited to movies than television. Whedon's shows are excellent... and also extremely expensive. Having to spend huge amounts of money for 22 episodes every year means that the corporate heads demand a pretty big payback pretty damn quick. Fox couldn't really afford for viewers to ease into the show (and God knows a Friday night time-slot didn't help). It's for similar reasons that Buffy left the WB and Angel was recently cancelled.

As a motion picture though, they spend the big bucks once and reap the benefits for months in merchandise, rentals, etc. You don't get that kind of a pay-off with TV (at least not that quickly). I love Whedon's serial storytelling, but I'm excited to see how he adapts to the big screen.

Re:firefly

[teraph]

Hopefully he's improved on his big-screen capabilities since the original Buffy and Alien 4. Ick.

Well, it's hard to tell what the original scripts were like. A good script can become awful between the day it's bought and the day it's released in a theater.

You have a half-dozen suits, directors, and editors to screw it up. (We're assuming here that the original script was good.)

seeing how he much time he's taken in perfecting the series runs he's had, I have little doubt that Serenity will be spectacular.

Yes. His TV shows are probably the better indicator of the quality of his writing, since that is where he has the most control. Everything he has done for film has had multiple hands, for good or ill. (And he's repeatedly stated his disappointment at both the Buffy movie and Alien Resurrection. He was once mis-identified as having written an episode of "Boy Meets World" and he expressed more pride in that incorrect credit than his writing of Resurrection.)

It's possible that the Firefly film will suck, maybe because he fails to produce a good script, maybe because Universal selects someone else to direct, maybe because the producers demand bad changes.

That's why he's better in TV. Head writers (who are almost always the producers) are nearly Gods with regard to how their scripts read and show up on screen. The network has some input, but much of it is Standards and Practices stuff (i.e., the censors).

In film, the producers own the script and can do as they please. And then the director is in control the moment shooting starts (with input from the producers).

Film writing is good money, but it's very little control. (Unless you make it yourself.)

Re:firefly

[eatenn]

Hopefully he's improved on his big-screen capabilities since the original Buffy and Alien 4. Ick.

Yeck. Being president of the Joss Whedon Stalker Club, I may be a little biased, but I've read Whedon's draft of the Buffy movie (which he didn't direct), and the version that actually made it to the theatres... Whedon's draft is much better. Apparently Donald Sutherland insisted on writing his own dialog, the studio wanted it to be more of a teen comedy, and the director didn't understand the material. It's the nature of the business that scripts get fucked with by a series of producers, directors, and studio heads who are constantly looking for ways to fit a monkey into the story somehow.

Whedon has also stated that no one hates Alien 4 more than he does. He had other people dictating what he was supposed to write.

I've also had the experience in film school having one of my scripts approved for production and then butchered beyond all recognition. It ain't fun.

Re:firefly

[PowerPill]

Fox had never zipped up the deal for a complete season of Firefly so right from the start it was a nail biter for Joss. Fox didn't even allow the premiere (Serenity) to be the premiere because they thought it lacked a certain pace. If you take notice, Fox generally takes the approach of more action right at the get go = better ratings over elegantly gripping television. So yes, it was that Whedon's vision didn't quite fit Fox's business model or formula rather. All of this is actually touched on in the box set.

Re:firefly

[TheLoneDanger]

It was Mandarin, except for one part when the engine breaks down and the ship broadcasts a warning that oxygen's low, check life support etc. That was Cantonese spoken fluently. I assume they just asked someone Chinese to say what they wanted "in Chinese" and that person just assumed Cantonese (which is fairly prevalent in North America).

The inconsistency bugged me a bit, but I was happy to actually understand what was being said for once (I only know a little Mandarin, and it was butchered so badly that the only one I could make out was mei-mei).

Interestingly enough, Jayne's actor seemed to speak Mandarin a bit better than everyone else. In the DVD extras he talks about it a bit, and I assume he practiced it more.

Re:firefly

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Whedon has also stated that no one hates Alien 4 more than he does. He had other people dictating what he was supposed to write.

The IMDb has an interesting trivia point about this, on the entry for Angel :

In the episode "Fredless", when talking about the Aliens series, a character says, "He's always had a thing for those 'Aliens' movies. Except for that last one they made - I think he dozed off." Series creator Joss Whedon wrote the script for Alien: Resurrection (1997), although it was heavily rewritten.

Re:firefly

[Udo Schmitz]

Whedon's shows are excellent... and also extremely expensive.

I always hear that, but noone ever gives any numbers? Did you pull that "fact" out of your ass, or can you give me any prove for that claim? I'm pretty sure any StarTrek show is far more expensive. Still the FX look worse. The planet sceneries sometimes look like in the classic series.

Strange.

[nefele]

So they actually decided to make a movie about a web browser?
Oh, wait...

Obligatory.

[Trejkaz]

Serenity Now!!

Re:Obligatory.

[TheLoneDanger]

Full opening theme lyrics:

Take my love, take my land,
Take me where I can not stand.
I don't care, I'm still free;
You can't take the sky from me.

Take me out to the black,
Tell them I ain't coming back.
Burn the land and boil the sea;
You can't take the sky from me.

There's no place I can be,
Since I've found Serenity.
But you can't take the sky from me.

Curse of the F's

[KoopaTroopa]

They're really naming it Serenity to avoid being prematurely cut off during production. This would surely have happened had the name started with 'F'.

Firefly - cancelled
Family Guy - cancelled
Futurama - cancelled

Someone ought to cancel Fox.

Re:Curse of the F's

[anagama]

Farscape

I don't what network it was on (DVD watcher myself), but it is also an unfair F cut.

Re:Curse of the F's

[Boing]

Never saw it myself, but a lot of people would be mad that you forgot "Freaks and Geeks".

Re:Curse of the F's

[GumboN]

Fmillenium
Flone Gunmen
Fjohn Doe
Fdark Angel
The Ftick...
----

New Series

[bsharitt]

While a movie would be nice, I would rather have the series returen. Firefly was one of the few shows I've watched that I really like and made it a point to watch, instead of just watching it if it was on like most other shows.

Re:New Series

[prockcore]

I would rather have the series returen

Joss Whedon should call up USA. With Monk and Dead Zone it's obvious that USA isn't afraid to back a strange-yet-brilliant show.

Or maybe FX (Nip Tuck, The Shield) or Bravo (Keen Eddie, Touching Evil).

Cable is really the only place you can find good shows that don't dumb down to the common denominator.

Fox is just stupid. How much money are they making from the Firefly dvds and Family Guy dvds? Compare that with how much money you would expect an any reality TV DVD to make.

In a couple of years, fox is going to have to reach all the way back to In Living Colour in order to make DVD sales... because no one wants to buy anything that they currently air.

Re:New Series

[Platinum Dragon]

Can someone point out what was especially good about it? I'll grant without having seen more than half an episode that it was better than Enterprise or any other show in the genre on tv currently, but that's not saying much.

I'll take a shot at this one. I've been catching the episodes on Canada's SPACE channel, and to me the series definitely had a fairly solid setting and mood in its first season, which is rare for a sci-fi series.

The show fuses sci-fi space conventions with Wild West-era characters and environments. The whole "space Western" thing is not subtle, but that might actually be a good thing. I've found that when sci-fi producers try to be "subtle", their works ends up coming across as obvious and pretentious, like the ST:TNG episodes that tried to disguise the contemporary parallels, then beat you over the head with The Contemporary Moral Message. The Western aspects aren't taken so far as to be implausibly anachronistic; the six-shooters and shotguns seem to fire some kind of directed energy instead of projectiles, and there is still advanced technology. It just so happens the super-cool machines have some rust and loose screws, which only adds to the plausibility. I still have some trouble conceiving of just what volume of space the series takes place within, but then again, technobabble is kept at a minimum, which is a plus.

What little CGI I really took notice of looked pretty darn good, which isn't difficult to do nowadays--but then, compare Firefly to Babylon 5's first season and a half, and Starhunter. Also, there is no sound in space scenes. This threw me at first, but it's also accurate. For all the lack of adherence to anything resembling physics and scientific accuracy, I found this to be a nice touch.

Firefly worked really well in a contained-episode format, instead of the plot arcs that damn near everyone tries to shoehorn into shows now. Thing is, Whedon has shown a tendency to start with just such a pure episode format, then eventually move the series into multi-episode or even full-season arcs. This makes the short life of the series even rougher, because the creative team didn't even have a chance to really go places with the show.

Incidentally, J. Michael Straczynski's Crusade series died under similar conflicts with its network (demands for more sex and violence, episode juggling harming continuity), and it appeared to be developing in a similar fashion. JMS had the pressure of following up Babylon 5 with an expected second strong effort right from the start. When TNT demanded new episodes be shot and aired before the originally-shot episodes could see airtime, there was little chance the series' potential would be realized early on, or allowed to develop.

I wonder how amazing Firefly could have been in further seasons, given time to settle in. I say it again, the series felt quite well-realized for a first-season sci-fi program, and it got cut off at the knees by a network known more for trashy "reality" TV and amusing cartoons than fantasy and science fiction.

Why do I get the feeling....

[ImTwoSlick]

... that they like to cancel great TV shows, just to make a few extra bucks on a movie they know people have been dying to see.

Thanks to Firefly...

[devphil]

...I am terrified of people in business suits wearing bright blue gloves.

On the up side, I know now how to say "Fuck everyone in the universe to death!", "Shut up," and my favorite, "Holy mother of God and all her wacky nephews!" in Mandarin Chinese.

Go Browncoats!

[torgosan]

Shiny!

won't be that great as movie

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie won't be able to depend on knowledge of the TV series because there isn't a large enough fanbase. That means they will have to condense a lot into 90 minutes. Firefly is so good because of the time allowed to develop the characters in a TV series. So while non-fans may have some visual effect treats and see SOME of the flavor of the show, it won't be able to touch the series; and fans will be disappointed because the movie will have to be introductory and won't pick up where the show left off.

TV show movies that do well are those that ran a long time and therefor have a large fanbase.

This will just be another scifi movie.

Re:At lest they tried

[KoopaTroopa]

Y'know, that same thought has occurred to me before. I don't watch much TV, and I find myself buying/borrowing/renting DVD sets of the few shows that I actually watch. Turns out a great number of them either air(ed) on Fox or are Fox properties. They greenlight stuff that I like! It just burns me up that they preempt these shows to death and subsequently cancel them after they give them a chance.

Perhaps the right hand doesn't agree with the left.

Don't Wander Around Best Buy

[Ralph Wiggam]

Seeing the article made me want to buy the DVD set. I liked the concept of the show a lot, but didn't catch many of them. In Star Trek, everyone has neatly groomed hair and they're always nice to each other. Firefly seemed to be about normal, flawed people who happen to fly around in space.

Anyway, I go to BestBuy.com to see how much it costs. Only 40 bucks is a good deal. Here's the messed up part. On the web site, and presumably on the store shelves, the Firefly DVD set is listed under "Horror". Their subgroups under horror are "Comedies, Occult, Vampires, Zombies, and General Horror". At least it's not under Zombies.

-B

Converts after cancellation

[loftydog]

Fox did everything it could to kill this show.

First, they aired the episodes in a random order so there was no continuity

Second, they changed the time it was aired, then changed the day, all within a span of three weeks

Third, and most insulting, is that they assumed the demographic watching Firefly would switch to watching Fastlane, as some of the numbers from Nielson were similar

Sadly, I've had more people become "fans" of the show after the cancellattion by loaning them the DVDs, with most of them not being scifi fans.

Re:Converts after cancellation

[thegrommit]

Fox did everything it could to kill this show.

I think the problem was that Fox didn't know what to do with it.

Anyhow, Universal is backing the film - not Fox.

Re:Converts after cancellation

[gmhowell]

If Fox didn't know what to do with it, they shouldn't have screwed around with it. They should have shown the pilot as the pilot. They should have shown the episodes in order, etc.

No, Fox *thought* they knew what to do, but obviously didn't.

Cast announced

[__aaaehb3101]

I don't see Ron Glass("the shepard") listed in the returning cast list. I wonder what is going on there? While not my favourite character, the shepard seems to have a more shady past than any.
from the press release:

...The Serenity cast will include such returning "Firefly" cast members as Nathan Fillion as Captain Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds, Gina Torres as Zoe Warren, Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra, Jewel Staite as Kaylee Frye, Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, Sean Maher as Dr. Simon Tam and Summer Glau as River Tam.

Re:WTF

[eatenn]

Cancel a television series to make a movie based on it?

I know, isn't that crazy? Next thing you know they'll be making a television series out of a box office flop.

Oh wait...

Unfair mods

[anagama]

I'd cure this if I hadn't already posted. For those who don't know, in Firefly, "Shiny" was sometimes used as slang for "good". So whoever modded this offtopic, is some kind of knucklehead who never saw the show.

Serenity?

[ShinyBrowncoat]

They are calling the movie 'Serenity'? Now what am I supposed to do with all these Firefly Movie posters?

Re:are people happy?

[ShinyBrowncoat]

this is the worst news every. this pretty much is the last nail in the coffin for the series. they're gonna wrap everything up for us fans and send us on our way!

Actually, no. Joss Whedon's original movie script did this, but after seeing the amazing DVD sales, the powers that be asked Joss to re-write the script to be 'more of a springboard to an eventual series return'...

You Forgot To Share!

[WombatControl]

I am not a native Chinese speaker (or even a remotely good Chinese speaker), but here's some tasty bits of Firefly Mandarin dialog:

Tai-kong suo-yo de shing-chiou doh sai-jin wu di pigu: Stuff all the planets in the universe up my ass!

Huh choo-shung huh tza-jiao duh!: Filthy fornicators of livestock!

Nee ta ma duh. Tyen-shia suo-yo duh run doh gai si! - F--- everyone in the universe to death!

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[TheLoneDanger]

Hopefully some mods will see the parent post. Fox didn't make it easy to watch Firefly on TV even for diehard Whedon or sci-fi fans because they showed the episodes out of order and kept switching its timeslot.

In addition to this, I believe that the Nielsen system is broken. I believe that there are 5000 Nielsen households, and that these are supposed to roughly correlate to population distribution. But over and over we see shows that get cancelled even with large numbers of fans complaining, along with some shows that no one cares enough to complain about. Firefly fans did crazy stuff like take out full page ads thanking the studios and each advertiser for the show by name, and mailing stuff to sponsors and studio heads.

Maybe we need more geeks to try to be Nielsen viewers? How does a family become a Nielsen household? (I'm Canadian so I can't do it anyway, but I hate watching shows I like get cancelled.)

Re:Serenity?

[Chris Carollo]

Alan Tudyk, who plays Wash, reportedly stole the Big Red Button that was used during the episode "Out of Gas", and left it with Joss, telling him to "hit it when his miracle arrived" and they would all return.

Plot intro, and more info

[Namarrgon]

When Mal takes on two new passengers - a young doctor and his unstable, telepathic sister - he gets much more than he bargained for. The pair are fugitives from the coalition dominating the universe, who will stop at nothing to reclaim the girl. The crew that was once used to skimming the outskirts of the galaxy unnoticed find themselves caught between the unstoppable military force of the Universal Alliance and the horrific, cannibalistic fury of the Reavers, savages who roam the very edge of space. Hunted by vastly different enemies, they begin to discover that the greatest danger to them may be on board "Serenity" herself.

More info here.

Re:Kaylee...

[brandonY]

Yeah, she was amazingly hot. On the DVD, they point out that Whedon, in his infinite wisdom, told her that she could be on the show, but she would have to gain 20 pounds so she would look like a real human. Bless the man.

Re:why does firefly have such a fanbase?

[harlows_monkeys]

Wheadon seems to not understand the enormous amounts of energy required for space travel, and moving livestock around is just not going to pay for it

You have absolutely no clue whatsoever how much energy would be required for such space travel, because in real life there is neither any theory nor any experiment that covers faster-than-light travel. Once your suspension of disbelief goes so far as to allow FTL, trying to do things like energy calculations is just silly.

You also have no clue at all what the value of livestock might be in an interstellar economy. If that livestock is key to allowing a colony to thrive on a planet, it could be very valuable.

And ancient projectile weapons? I'm sorry, my suspension of disbelief only goes so far

So you have no problem with FTL, which is something that is, as far as we know currently, impossible, but having some people using projectile weapons while others use more sophisticated weapons bothers you? Even though if you just look around on Earth, you can find societies that still use rocks and pointed sticks?

This is one of the things that Firefly got right that most other science fiction gets wrong--technology is too uniform in most science fiction. Based on a couple thousand years of Earth history, it is far more believable to have a wide range of technology.

The campaign to Save Angel

[The Lynxpro]

I'm placing this in here because most FireFly fans are probably also fans of Whedon's other program, Angel. As you know, the WB Network made the announcement that they will not be renewing Angel for the sixth season, despite its majorly improved ratings over last year and that its the #2 show on their network for the major 18-34 aged advertising demographic.

If you wish to help with the efforts to save the show, there are several websites coordinating fan activities, and I will list them here:

Petition Online:
Here's the petition protesting the cancellation of the program. Please sign it and join the 72,000 + other fans who already have...
http://www.petitiononline.com/ai5d0162/pe tition.ht ml

http://www.savingangel.org/
Saving Angel is placing ads in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety. You can find them here:

http://www.supportangel.org/
Support Angel has been coordinating a lot of the fan base postcard campaigns. They are a great source of information.

Some of the other information you'll find on the pages include the fact that Tribune Broadcasting itself (a 20% + shareholder in The WB Network) is encouraging fans to protest the cancellation. The WB wants to replace Angel either with a teen version of "Dark Shadows" or another revamp of "Lost in Space." It is reported that UPN has passed on picking up the show because they'd rather try to run their own version of "Teen Wolf" and borrowing heavily from the Buffy (Whedon) format to make it a success.

If you've been holding off on purchasing any of the Angel Season Sets on DVD, now is the time to purchase them; the networks ARE watching the sales figures. Remember, Fox decided to relaunch "Family Guy" after witnessing their sales success. And while UPN might have passed on picking up Angel for Season Six, we still have TNT, FX Network (fitting since Angel is a Twentieth-Century Fox production), SciFi, or even Tribune Broadcasting syndication to fall back upon!