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Serenity Pushed Back to September
iontyre writes "According to Joss Whedon and reported at fireflymovie.com the much anticipated feature film adaptation of the superb but canceled tv show Firefly has been delayed till September from its original April release to supposedly avoid too much genre competition."
SERENITY NOW!!!!
...Firefly is really superb. Its a shame they are delaying its premier. Maybe people can argue that, but not that it's unique in its own kind. I really loved the western feeling, although it only lived 14 episodes :\ I wish they would have supported it instead of those brainless reality shows, etc.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
so what else is supposed to pop up in april that would cause such a ruckus?
You wouldn't be satisfied with it now.
Wait.
Take my release date too.
Sigh. Firefly was a great series, though it took awhile to grow on people. I've been making my coworkers watch the series on DVD. After watching the first one their response is "So it's like a western in space?" A week later they hand back the DVDs with a glum face, asking "Why did they cancel it? That was a great show."
As if millions of geeks suddenly cried out in anguish...
*sigh* Hopefully it'll be worth the wait. My Firefly addiction needs more material!
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Rats. I've been eagerly looking forward to the Big Damn Movie (Serenity) ever since my friends dragooned me into watching the DVD set, but I'd rather see it succeed -- and the franchise survive long enough for Fox's rights to expire and the show to get back on some other network or cable outlet -- than to have it sink into the swamp and be forgotten.
I'm posting this simply because I'd heard from a number of people that Firefly was worth watching, and want to continue to spread the word about it.
---
I download the Firefly pilot. I watched it. I enjoyed it so much that I then got off my ass, ran down to Futureshop and picked up the DVD set (that afternoon) without a second thought.
Not everyone may like this series, but I certainly did. Enough that even though I'd already downloaded a few of the episodes (without watching any but the first), I went out and bought the DVDs anyways, based on how good the first one was.
And it's NOT Sci-fi. It's set in a sci-fi environment yes, but the show itself is not sci-fi themed. (ie, there's no alien-of-the-week-kinda-crap going on..)
I can wait for this... oh yes.. I'm sure I'll be able to... [quitely rocking in my chair]
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Well, I suppose I can't fault them for wanting the movie to do well, particularly when you consider that the success of this movie will directly affect whether or not we get even more Firefly after this point. Not that it makes me particularly happy. :-P
Man how bad does your movie have to suck if you are scared of the next Star Wars?
As Joss said in TFA (emph mine)
See the TV Tome writeup. I'd never heard of it before TFSS, so I can't say anything about TV Tome's accuracy.
sigs, as if you care.
Joss, don't make me kick you into an engine...
I WANT MY SPACEWHORES NOW!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You DO realize that no matter how badly Episode III sucks, it's still going to garner a massive box office take, right?
more than help. A good title is everything. Serenity is not a good title for a movie. What is their target audience? I don't care how good it may or may not be, people are going to see the title Serenity on the movie listings and go, "huh? I don't want to see that, lets go see something else".
Its not fair but its fact.
:(
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I like how your signature mocks the lack of individualism in the world, while the text of your post clings to the majority opinion.
"Mid-April release" usually means "disposable genre crap that the studio is rushing out early in hopes of making some money on the curiosity factor." Think "Bulletproof Monk" or "LXG".
"Late September release" means "we think this is good and we expect to make some serious money on it and maybe we'll think about a sequel."
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
No, it just means that they don't want to put what is currently a cult favorite against the marketing giant known as Star Wars. Remember, most people have never heard of Firefly, and when put against a major film release, it could easily be lost in the marketing blitz (although I personnally do not care if I ever see Episode III).
It is much better to give Serenity the best chance of exposure. People who never watched the show will not realize how truly great it is. Most people would probably rather watch Star Wars being a known commodity than take a chance with something new and strange.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
No, it doesn't, necessarily. In this case, it's recognition that while you may have a good movie, it's based on a niche market that you hope to expand (in this case, fans of Firefly, who weren't significant enough to keep a TV show from being cancelled.) You move bad movies to October/November, or February/March.
Releasing two weeks before a movie that's bound to do $300 million domestic and appeals to the same broad demographic is bad. What's worse is the inevitable media coverage and advertising flood that will accompany Episode III, and that will be peaking right at the time you are trying to convince people to see your movie.
I would doubt if that is the only reason. In an interview on fireflyfans.net, Kaylee (Jewel Staite) was saying that a few characters are making an abbreviated appearance because they couldn't get away from filming something else, and I wonder if this is not supposed to help that as well. And according to all the cast members and Joss, this is supposed to be 100x better because of less constraints from Fox.
I knew that nerds and porn mixed readily. But a nerd dedicated to porn?
My hat's off to you.
"That seem right to you?" ... but, on the good news front, it gives me more time to work on my fan trailer i've been finishing...
(fand will recognize it)
it's gonna be a hell of a movie, boys and girls...
anyone wanna join me for a premiere in Dallas?
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
And I was hoping to have some peace and quiet by Christmas.
sulli
RTFJ.
Your logic only follows if the measure of a piece of art is entirely based on its popularity during a specified timeframe. There are plenty of examples, across mediums and throughout history, in which works have been ill-received initially, or by certain groups of people. This does not indicated that they are any "less good". Additionally, the unique nature of Firefly probably guarantees that it will take time to be accepted by the general populace. As geeks, we tend to thing of the majority as fairly ill-opinionated and ill-informed (and that's putting our general consensus nicely). Given time and exposure, I guarantee that a lot of people will come to like Firefly and its derivative works. Just look at all the posts by people saying "My friends made me watch it. At first I thought it was kinda dumb/weird/not what I'm into, but after becoming addicted I can say this is a great show!". So I think it's a little premature to say the show isn't superb. It just didn't generate superb Nielsens. DISCLAIMER: I think Firefly is f'ing awesome.
If was superb it would not have been cancelled, and the studio would be only to happy to milk it for revenue.
Superb != Popular. The problem is that the networks need to appeal to the lowest common denominator. In the U.S., the majority of the television watching populace is not interested in a program that makes them think, hence the popularity of shows like Fear Factor and Oprah.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
... Insanity later....
I loved Firefly, but when I saw the title of the article, all I could think of was Frank Costanza screaming that phrase.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
The studio probably doesn't want it to get crushed by Star Wars the way Logan's Run was.
If was superb it would not have been cancelled
No, it was cancelled because Fox doesn't want another 800 pound gorrilla like the X-Files and the Simpsons. They want to keep a steady churn of new shows that will capture interest for a season or two. Then, before they become too entrenched with popularity and the actors/producers start looking for more money they can dump the show and put the next-new-thing on in it's place.
They know people will complain about the show being cancelled, but that they will also tune in to the new show just as eagerly as the old one.
They can't dump the Simpsons because that is the cornerstone of their image, but they would dump it in a heartbeat if they could.
-----
Pretty Bad Privacy (PBP) Public Key
6
Interesting... but flawed..
apply that logic to Cheers... a show wich WAS cancelled... in its first season... it was allowed to continue only because NBC lacked a replacement. Or how about Farscape, which many here consider superb? THAT was cancelled to. Maybe it's because sometimes executives are gorram idiots? think THAT might have something to do with it?
By your (flawed) logic, I guess that makes Titanic a SUPER superb movie?
put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
Then, obviously, the bachelor is superb.
Seriously, this is not really a logical issue. Regardless of the quality of Firefly, the fact is that it was not promoted. When the majority is completely unaware of something, how can the fact that they didn't tune in mean that they thought it was less than superb?
Literally everyone I've forced my DVDs upon has absolutely loved it.
I'm sure a dozen other people will point this out, but there are a lot of reasons a series can fail that have nothing to do with quality of the series. I never saw an episode of Firefly on TV, and did not even know it existed until someone showed me an episode on DVD. It is one of the most entertaining shows I have ever seen, I I normally have a strong dislike for Wheaton's work. A little research showed me that the show was not advertised much, played on a network I don't even look for shows on, and played at a number of different times, when it was not preempted by sports. It makes it hard to build up a following in a series when your audience has to do research beforehand to know when and if an episode will be playing. I've since shown this series to a number of people, everyone has liked it, and several have bought the DVDs (I know I did).
Never underestimate the power of Fox and the timeslot of doom. Fox has a habit of shifting programs air time and day, then landing them in a timeslot that gets preempted by sports events. A most excelent way to ensure that no show has a chance to survive.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
I wouldn't use that word to describe Firefly. I thought it was mediocre, and somewhat forced. The space western aspect was a little over the top, clearly the result of some TV exec saying, "I know, let's mix genres and we'll have something new and fresh!" It was better than any sci-fi on TV at that time, except farscape, but that doesn't make it "superb".
As if a movie studio would admit to something like that. So what if they hadn't seen the movie. They were told it was bad. I mean, they've gone as far as to not allow people to review the movie, saying that they created it for the fans (what was that movie again? the two british spies with a weather controlling Sean Connery as the bad guy).
Play some free games
You obviously did not watch the show or track all of the terrible things that Fox did to it during its short run. First, they put in on a difficult night: Friday. Then they showed all of the episodes out of order. The pilot episode was not actually aired until the last week. It was this episode that explained who everyone was and the basic plot of the show. It made the show somewhat intriguing for those of us who like to solve mysteries but very confusing for everyone else. In addition, the show actually got good ratings, but the executives thought they could make more money with something else.
Remember, popularity doesn't even determine the longevity of a show. There are the production costs and often the personal whim of the station managers. Also, just because a show stays on the air does not mean it is "superb". Can you really call "Fear Factor" superb?
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
Untrue, a show may certainly be cancelled in spite of being superb. A superb show does not necessarily generate sufficient revenue to produce a profit margin which is acceptable in the television industry. James Cameron's Dark Angel was a superb show which was cancelled in large part due to its high production costs.
If was superb it would not have been cancelled
Yeah, because the Execs at FOX have NEVER blown a call on a tv series. Please! FOX has a rep in the industry for making bad calls about their shows. The show, 'Family Guy' was killed after about 3 seasons and then went on to be a massive hit on DVD. (I have heard that it is being considered to be picked up by cartoon network as a new series.)
It was cancelled because the majority of people did not think it was superb.
It was cancelled because nobody knew anything about it. It was repeatedly moved to differing timeslots (This is VERY bad for a shows ratings, in general), and they didn't even show the episodes in order. I'm not even sure that they aired the pilot episode that sets the whole story. (You can go read all the gory details about how it was mis-handeled on most firefly sites.)
so its probably pretty poor in the eys of most people.
No matter how good a show is, unless you properly support and market it, it will die. Everyone I have loaned my DVD to LOVED it, including people who aren't sci-fi fans. This isn't a case of the masses not liking something. This is a case of some stupid Fox execs that blew a call (Yet again).
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I'll be in my bunk.
Flamebait? Sometimes too much logic is itself a failure.
Classic argumentum ad numerum fallacy. Popularity and quality seldom meet.
If (say) CSI had been given Firefly's slot and shuffled around as much as Firefly was and pre-empted by sports as often as Firefly was, it would have been canceled, too.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
In news more relevant to this crowd, the DVD for Colussus, the Forbin Project was released today. One of the most underappreciated science fiction movies of the early seventies. How do you top a self-aware, megalomanical computer taking over the world? Build two of them!
Do we get to blame George Lucas for screwing with Firefly as well as our (original) Star Wars now?
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
I think you're talking about The Avengers.
I am trolling
Ahh... but majority does not rule in TV land, unless you are talking about majority of money.
For example... Firefly was pulling in the same viewership or more as other shows that were not cancelled at the time. The reason it got axed... because it had much higher production costs then the reality TV shows that lasted.
Remember... $50k/week on fear factor is nothing compared to paying actors and writers in NBCs mind. Fox has caught on to this fact even more and has taken drops in ratings in order to save money in production costs and hence make more money.
So for this reason... good shows with good (sometimes even extraordinary ratings) get let go and we are left with reality TV drivel
Firefly was also placed in nasty timeslots to compete for viewership in that genre...
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
I watched the Firefly DVDs and thought they were good, not the best thing I ever watched, but good. Definitely up there with the good episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
It seems like there is this new genre in sci fi developing. You've seen it before if you watch anime. Things like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop where they mix western elements with sci-fi. I wonder if Whelon drew inspiration from these.
And to throw something else into this posting, anyone remember Space: Above and Beyond? Yet another great sci-fi show that was cancelled early.
You think firefly makes people think?!? I think you really need to practice your thinking. I think it was just trying too hard to be different without actually alienating anyone. Sort of like buffy, or Smallville, or dare I say it, .... Friends.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
It also got worse ratings that the show it replaced... Dark Angel
the reason it failed, was the same reason DA failed... they put it in a Friday timeslot
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Did you start at the beginning? (Fox aired the pilot last). You're clearly in the minority though; everyone I've showed it to has said it was the best TV they'd ever seen. Good writing, excellent acting, believable characters.
A wondefully modest suggestion.
I was irritated when I first read this. Then I figured it out when someone pointed out your signature. It may be a troll, but I'd say it's more insightful catalyst than troll.
Troll on.
> Pushing a movie back due to competition means your movie sucks.
Unless, of course, your competition is the last(?) installment of Star Wars. Who in their right mind is going to open another sci-fi movie against that? This way they push Serenity back a few months until Star Wars has run its course and everyone's hungry for a good space movie. And with only a $40M budget, I think Serenity is going to turn out to be a solid hit at the box office that goes on to an even better life on DVD.
HOOCHIE MAMA! HOOCHIE MAMA!
While there is certainly merit to this argument, I think a huge part of the problem was lack of awareness. I never even heard about FireFly until months after it was cancelled, along with most of my other geek friends. Having watched the entire DVD set I can say with no reservations it was leaps and bounds better (IMHO) than at least two of the major sci-fi franchises currently out there; SG1 and Enterprise.
It needed some work as well, but a second (or even just a full first) season would have gone a long way to smoothing out any wrinkles. The groundwork was all laid, the characters had depth and were believable, there was an evil empire to hate, space pirates, and there was less than usual number of abominations of physics than we see in most space sci-fi. Not to mention a whole social caste of high-class call girls, who couldn't get behind that?
I think what may have turned a lot of viewers off was the character-centric nature of the stories, too much "mushy stuff" for geeks to handle apparently. I don't know about others but after decades of hour long episodes devoted to finding a clever way of rebooting warp drives in record time, or decoding a signal before some hostile race killed everyone; some serious focus on characters and emotion - and how the future world actually affects people - was a welcome change.
Before I get flooded with responses berrating me for blatantly ignoring the humanitarian aspects of ST:TNG and the like, I know, they're there. And I love TNG, and DS9, don't get me wrong. But there was just something about FireFly that has been somehow lacking in scifi for a long time.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
"Unless, of course, your competition is the last(?) installment of Star Wars. Who in their right mind is going to open another sci-fi movie against that?"
As I recall, Warner Bros did exactly that in 1999 with pretty good results....
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
Does that mean Jar Jar was a Browncoat or Alliance?
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Rescheduling, unto itself, doesn't necessarily mean the title sucks.
But pushing a movie back from early summer (yes, in Hollywood April is early summer) to september is a bad sign that the studio has no confidence in the film.
September is when they schedule "throwaway" titles that aren't expected to be profitable
But it bored me too tears. And it was really hard to get past all of the terrible accents. Add into the fact that I don't like Westerns or Civil War stories. BTW, my parent post is not a troll. It's my honest opinion.
click me
Given that the average movie reviewer is probably about the right age to think that Diana Rigg was the hottest thing to come out of the UK in the 20th century, it's no wonder that they hid the Uma-abomination from them.
(nothing against Uma, actually, but she was all wrong for this part)
I bought the series and rewatched it in the Directory's intended order. Before I thought the series was great, but rewatching it in proper order made it awesome. Fox should be ashamed.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
If was superb it would not have been cancelled
Since when does quality garantee survival?
What kind of insane world view are you basing this on?
Given that we live in majority rule world
See, again with the insane world view. The minority elite rules the world buddy, they just allow the unwashed masses to voice their opinion every few years on which of these two identical members of the elite is gonna be VISIBLY in power for the next few years. Works well too, people spend so much energy on elections, they don't even bother with bloody revolutions...
It was cancelled because the majority of people did not think it was superb.
Well, first of all, no. It was cancelled because a MINORITY of people had the power to cancel it and did so. That minority might even be one single Fox tv exec with too much power and not enough judgement.
But what IF a majority of people did not think it was superd? That doesn't mean that it wasn't superb. A majority of people didn't even SEE it. Why? Because they couldn't see it. It wasn't on when fox claimed it would be on, it was actually on a random shifting time slot of death (such as airing on 12:20am on a friday night. No kidding).
show and was unable to generate sufficient viewing figures and/or sufficient advertising revenue to sustain itself, so its probably pretty poor in the eys of most people.
It was killed BEFORE it ever got a chance to generate sufficient advertising revenue. And yet another company picked it up and is funnelling millions into it...hmmmm...
Man, you are either making a really half-assed attempt at trolling, or you are really gonna be screwed when you get around to the logic portion of your math education, or god forbid, college philosophy classes. Seriously, "someone cancelled it therefore the majority didn't like it therefore it is of bad quality" is probably the lamest logical leapfrog game I've seen all week and I read fark flame wars! Sheesh!
You can't take the sky from me...
Unless, of course, your competition is the last(?) installment of Star Wars. Who in their right mind is going to open another sci-fi movie against that?
The Hitchhiker's Guide movie is opening two weeks before Episode III. I'm in two minds whether this is a good thing or not.
I would have loved to watch Whedon try and pitch this to the studios. "Yes, see, it's based on a TV show that failed because of lack of viewers."
A smart move, really. I'm a big fan of firefly, and I know the movie's going to be good. However, if you pit it against the Star Wars series firefly will get squashed like it's namesake. It doesn't matter how BAD the Star Wars film will be, people will still go see the conclusion of their erstwhile favorite story, before taking a chance on a new film in the same genre. If Episode III actually turned out to be decent, then Serenity would be doomed. This is especially true since they're going for somewhat younger audiences, many of whom (College students, recent grads) are on limited entertainment budgets.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Remember how Family Guy was really funny? And how Fox, assclowns that they are, cancelled it (seems they like cancelling good shows that begin with 'F'---producers take note), but DVD sales were so unignorably good that Fox was convinced to start the series back up again?
They're not going to do that with Firefly. No matter how successful the movie is. If it makes a ton---a ton---of money, we'll get a sequel. Maybe. But the story was meant to be told episodically, minor threads weaving subtly until they burst to the forefront. You can't do that in a movie; there's just not enough time. (See: Babylon 5.)
This whole mess just depresses me so. Damn you, Fox.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
from TFA:
"And now they have seen it, and unless they're way better liars than I'm used to, they dug it. Actually, they dug it pretty large, which is a good sign since there's not a single finished effect in the film. There's no reworking the end, no reshoots, no "does it have to be in space?". It's just a marketing issue. Now you'll get to watch lots of trailers in the summer."
studio execs dug it large. how often does that happen?
i love the "does it have to be in space" comment, since i seem to recall one of the commentary tracks from the DVD set talking about how hard it was to convince people at fox that the show should, in fact, happen in space. or could, for that matter.
looking forward to september '05.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Wash: "Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science fiction." Zoe: "You live on a spaceship, dear."
No, it was cancelled because Fox doesn't want another 800 pound gorrilla like the X-Files and the Simpsons. They want to keep a steady churn of new shows that will capture interest for a season or two. Then, before they become too entrenched with popularity and the actors/producers start looking for more money they can dump the show and put the next-new-thing on in it's place.
That's an interesting thought, even if it is wholly unsupported by facts. There was never any danger of Firefly becoming an 800-lb gorilla. It did poorly in its time slot, end of story. There was no hope of bringing it back as a mid-season replacement (like what did the trick for X-Files) because it cost $1e6+ per episode to produce, and you can always churn out another Joe Millionaire for a quarter of that.
Remember, for every X-Files that made the jump from Friday obscurity to Sunday limelight, you have a Lone Gunmen, Harsh Realm, M.A.N.T.I.S. and Brisco County, Jr. that didn't.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Characters talk about travelling between star systems, I believe. I remember lines and scenes about being in "deep space".
They don't show any faster-than-light travel, but possibly that's just because it's boring.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Well this is true, but not for the reason you say.
First off, Fox sold the movie rights to Universal, who in turn made the movie.
However, part of the deal was that Universal couldn't create a TV series from the movie within X number of years (where X is undisclosed).
None the less, Universal has more or less talked about making a trilogy if Serenity does well, particularly on opening weekend.
Fox didn't air the pilot.
Fox showed what episodes they did show, out of order.
Fox preempted the series several times for baseball playoffs, and poorly communicated time changes.
Fox did almost no promotion of the show, the only promotion for the show they DID seem to do, hinged around the "girl in the box" scenario, which they never even showed, because it was from the Pilot episode (which never aired until they had decided to cancel it).
Fox could not have done more harm to developing an audience for an episodic series if they had tried.
I don't remember- what was the WB movie that opened after Star Wars in 1999?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I did a quick google search on 'firefly history,' 'firefly background' and 'firefly faster than light' and I could find no reference to the series being set in a single system. In fact, references to intergalactic war and reviews mentioning faster than light travel were pretty easy to find. There certainly seem to be far too many habitable planets for a single system. What are you basing this assertion on?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Why would Fox prevent Universal from making a TV version of Firefly? Clearly, Fox didn't want it; they rushed it off the air before they'd even aired all of the episodes.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Huge Firefly fan myself, and this news makes me sad. However, thanks to some "peers" of mine I've been watching the revamped Battlestar Galactica episodes and have been blown away. It's obvious that Whedon was not alone in his realist approach to science fiction. He was just one of the first of what appears to be a School of scifi reactionaries, creative TV people tired of the fantastic and generally ungrounded science fiction of Star Trek.
The new BSG begins airing "officially" in January. What it lacks in wit and humor ala Firefly, it makes up for with amazing drama that rivals anything on ER or West Wing. I would not be surprised if it comes up for Emmy, and not just for special effects. Watch it to quell the pain of Firefly withdrawl, and you mind yourself nearly forgetting about Serenity. Nearly.
Not after, but about six weeks before.
The Matrix
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
Just in case you're kidding, it was The Matrix (released by New Line, a division of AOL/Time Warner). I would argue, though, that The Matrix was less a hit because of the science fiction and more a hit based on being a rocking action movie. Firefly, on the other hand, is more traditional science fiction fare despite the western theme which makes it a bit different.
Dark Angel failed because after producing a pretty entertaining first season, they changed things around and made a really terrible second season. Even staring at Jessica Alba wasn't enough to carry me to the fourth episode of the second season.
Ah, true- I'd also argue that The Matrix didn't exactly have interstellar or even interplanetary battles in it; I'd call it Zen Sci-Fi and thus not even close to being in competition with Star Wars and Lucas-style special effects.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Um... Babylon 5 might not be the best example for your argument that episodically-told shows don't get a second chance on the little screen.
TNT picked up the show after its cancellation at the end of season 4, and not only did JMS manage to make the 5th season go, he also got a number of movie deals *plus* a spin-off show. And the show hadn't even hit DVD yet.
I'm not worried about Firefly. Faith manages.
I got it immediately, and if I had mod points I'd toss one out to make sure it hit the people browsing at 1. That being said, linking to the adult film database? Wow. I mean, really, wow. Hehe.
I WANT MY SPACEWHORES NOW!
;-)
Inara was a space call girl, not some street hussy!
You can't take the sky from me...
> I'm in two minds
Zaphod? Is that you?
Oops! That was supposed to be Colossus, The Forbin Project
considering the impact he had on ep1, i think it's pretty clear that jar jar's a reaver... :>
ed
similarly, if ep3 does poorly, all the firefly fans can tell their friends: "gee, you hated ep3? well, there's another sci-fi flick in a few months that will really crank your motor..." and lend 'em the DVDs.
ed
Hate to say this, but September is a miserable date, and will probably cause it to tank. Why? Statistics. Box Office Mojo had an article about this for Sky Captain - on the whole, a movie released in September will make approximately 50% of the money it would've made during the summer months. Lots of reasons (School starting, summer family vacations, etc), but it all adds up to a loss of income. Which is a shame. February's another bad month - that and September are usually where sucky movies go to die. Not that I think it'll suck, but it's a bad economics decision.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Hank Parnell of the Texas Mercury asserts that Fox deliberately killed Firefly for political reasons. Personally, I don't think Fox's politics had anything to do with it, but his article is entertaining. The complete essay is on fireflyfans.net. I copied the most inflammatory, er, interesting, excerpts below:
User Training for Busy Programmers
OK I gotta disagree with Dark Angel if you include the 2nd season. The first season was excellent but once they brought in the whole mutant brigade, and most annoyingly the dog boy the show took a huge dive.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Not that I watch TV at all, but is this how Hollywood is really running TV these days? Ditch the starring actors before they ask for more money?
I've run my understanding about the current "reality show" fad (which seems to have settled into a modus operandi rather than a fad) as being a response to a writers' strike. So perhaps what you say makes sense along those lines.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Go and see this movie! Make everyone you know come with you! Buy the DVDs, show them to other people, make this franchise make money! And maybe, just maybe, Fox will pick it back up again.
qntm.org
Dark Angel failed because they brought Vincent from the 80's "Beauty and the Beast" in it, and the time warp thus created swallowed them whole! ;-)
You can't take the sky from me...
I've run my understanding about the current "reality show" fad (which seems to have settled into a modus operandi rather than a fad) as being a response to a writers' strike.
It's much more simple than that... If you can mae one show for a million dollers and episode, and in return make two million on ad revnue, you've doubled your profit... But if you can make a show for 50k, and each episode makes $200,000 on ad revenue, you've quadrupled your profit!
Sure, you don't make as much money as you used to, because there is a limited number of timeslots available, but did you just see, you are making 4x the return as you used to! Woot! Also, less sarcastically, cheaper shows means less cost of failure.
Not necessarily, Harry potter decided(wisely) not to compete with LotR. likewise it is wise, not to go head to head with Star Wars.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Yeah, because Malcolm Reynolds and his fellow Independents were all fighting to keep their slaves. Don't be ridiculous.
Including selling his movies on DVD and NOT selling his movies on DVD.
As far as Firefly goes, pushing a movie from srpingtime to the Dead Zone of late September is almost NEVER a good thing.
Unless the movie is so good that it dominates all of the other weak releases that will be dumped into that part of the year.
Personally I don't understand the logic behind releasing a theatrical feature for a tc series that was cancelled after one season. Good or not, it didn't exactly have a chance to build a huge following beyond it's niche.
Back in my day a tv series had to play succesfully in re-runs all over the world for several years, and spawn a huge fanbase before it warranted getting it's own theaterical release.
I think a mini-series or a several tv movies would have been a better idea instead.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Your loss. I liked the 2nd season. Joshua was not Jar Jar. My two favorite episodes in the series was in the 2nd season. The only way you can justify dropping DA after the fourth episode is if you dropped Voyager and Enterprise in the same amount of time. Or perhaps your thought patterns closely resemble Fox executives.
I don't even understand why people are in such "mourning" over Firefly. Yes it was good and I liked it, but hey, I preferred ogling Jessica Alba and finding paranoid parallels to our current reality. Firefly seemed to be awfully partial to the losers of the Civil War, and after this year's general election (and the Red Sox beating the Yankees), I really don't see any endearing themes to take from the show. I'd like to think more hetero chicks are on slashdot generating this Firefly > DA vibe, but I'm thinking its probably something else...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Its more like $50K generating 1 million. They show more concern about the net profit than you purport. But you're still better off making 950K with less investment, than 1M with greater risk.
Oddly enough, even TV execs are realizing the limits of "reality show" programming. Unfortunately, they are replacing those slots with evening soap operas that are supposed to pattern "Dawson's Creek" season 1. Money is so important, it subverts art.
Eh, I watch too much TV anyway, and advertisers do not care about my demographic. I do more hacking and TV programmers plug-in more profitable programs for pod people. Win win. *sigh*
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
In The Soul of Battle : From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny, Victor Davis Hanson discusses how the motivations for fighting the Civil War differed between rich and poor southerners. The rich were fighting to keep their slaves. The poor, who generally didn't own slaves, were fighting to keep their culture and right to self-rule. When the Union general Sherman marched through Georgia, looting and destroying plantations and Southern infrastructure, he concentrated on destroying the property of the rich Southerners. Of course, a lot of poor farmers got caught in the swath of destruction that he cut across the state, but his intention was to break the will of the Southern leaders by bringing the cost of the war home to them.
I think it was these conflicting motivations for fighting--greed vs. self rule--that gives rise to comments like yours and the conflicting view that many Americans have about our Civil War. For some Americans, it was about slavery. For others, it was about self rule.
Another interesting fact is that the original American colonists, who were English citizens, practically begged the English king to forbid slavery in the Colonies. They believed it was immoral, and feared that it would pollute and ultimately divide the culture of the new Colonies. The king insisted on permitting slavery in the New World because he thought it would help the agricultural trade. Guess those original colonists knew what they were talking about, didn't they?
What the slightly-paranoid writer of this article suggests is that Firefly (remember, this was a discussion about Firefly?) offers us a chance to explore the politics and emotional fallout of that war, without the slavery issue.
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All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
*Readers* of Sci-fi tend not to have problems with the big-tent definition of the genre. I'ved noticed.
I don't have MOD points so I'll lend you my Karma bonus. This is a very insightfull comment. However, I am very much also a *Reader* of Sci-Fi- and there are just some pieces of the genre which should never be made into movies. TV Shows, fine, but I find overly philosophical movies to be rather boring. Even the movie adaptation of Asimov's ultimate classic, Nightfall, was horrible. No, for a sci-fi movie to be good, it has to have spaceships & lasers for me to a large extent- or at least one good massive battle scene.
I'd even leave made-for-TV movies out of that- I loved Riverworld as a book and the Sci-fi channel feature presentation was even better, if a bit short (I think they planned to turn it into a series but didn't get the ratings to justify a series).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
[Punt]
*Thwoop!*
[CHUDCHUDCHUDCHUD... SPUT]
Firefly was great - as Bender said, "Another great sci-fi show cancelled before its time." Still, there's a movie even if I have to wait for it, and in the meantime, the new Battlestar Galactica series absolutely. Kicks. Ass. Mondays at 8pm have become sacrosanct TV viewing!
You must think in Russian.
Sure, Inara was, but the house full of women was a house full of SPACEWHORES.
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
However, part of the deal was that Universal couldn't create a TV series from the movie within X number of years (where X is undisclosed).
Actually, X=10, according to a Q&A session with Jewel Staite (who playes the engineer, Kaylee, on the show).
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
From the script of 'Objects in Space'
WASH: Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science fiction.
ZOE: We live in a space ship, dear.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
He didn't say he had a problem with the big-tent definition. It's because Sci-Fi includes a lot there can be different 'Sci-Fi' movies that are very different in content and tone.
If anything, the more I watch the new BSG the more I realize how crappy the first was, and I used to absolutely love the old Battlestar. That Ron Moore took a half-rate show like Battlestar Galactica and not only gave it viable meaning, but somehow managed to integrate the old into it is absolutely brilliant. It's like someone taking the eighties show A.L.F. and turning it into Apocolypse Now.
Rescuing an old franchise and making it current and thought provoking is something Paramount has been trying to do with Enterprise, and to little effect. What they need to do is pay lots of money to Moore and bring him on to revitalize the series.
Whoops.
I heard through the grapevine (and it probably is just hopeful Firefly fans talking here) that if the movie did well, they would consider bringing the series back. I would presume this delay would obliterate the chances of that, as most of the actors probably can't afford (nor desire to) wait a year to see if the Firefly will fly again.
It's on at the prime time of 1 AM Tuesday night/Wednesday morning on Channel 7.
Well, I'm watching it at least. I was lucky that I couldn't get to sleep the other week, and discovered it while doing some late night channel surfing.
fox shouldnt be ashamed. Fox should be beaten so stupid they enjoy their own stupid reality shows.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Leaving aside the question of whether Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist with expertise in ancient Greek agricultural and military matters, is necessarily the most authoritative writer on the subject of the US Civil War, and granting him that, it's not relevant to what the posting I responded to said. He's talking about current, northern attitudes toward the Civil War, and how they might have led to hostility against the series: but the most common contemorary Northern view of the Civil War is entirely that it was a war of liberation of the slaves (ahistorical as that view is). I think it's also useful for you to look at the context of modern pro-Confederate attitudes: those confederate battle flags on US state flags were added mostly in the 1950s, in implicit response to efforts on the part of the "Northern" federal government to push through desegregation. Before about 1980, State's rights arguments in the US, and ideas about how these relate to local "culture," nearly always end up revolving around issues of racialism. (You see it in the North, too, e.g. in Boston during the busing crisis, in which a lot of locals objecting to having black students bused into their neighborhoods, but masqueraded their racism with talk of "local control" and "neighborhood schools." Often the only difference between the neighborhoods concerned were the colors of their skin.)
This isn't a golfing magazine, numbnutz. It's an open forum. I don't see anywhere saying "Hey this is a firefly specific forum!". Nope, it's slashdot. It's a lot of things. But it's not just for morons who like crap television. Now, THIS is a troll. Fuckface.
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... on a minor note, the people who did the special effects for Firefly also do the effects for the new BSG - which means, the occasional out of focus space shot, cameramen a bit slow in tracking the action, the odd wild zoom when something 'unexpected' happens etc.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Wow Whedon's own words really seem to contradict his recent statement. My guess is that the producers' faith is shaken and that they are better liars than Whedon is used to.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Because at least the studio is giving the movie a fighting chance. According to the WierdOne's comments they (the studio execs) "really, REALLY liked what they saw, this is before the SFX were added". They're not requesting any changes, alternates endings yada-yada-yada.
Speaking as someone who was active on the Firefly(TV) forums since the first week, the WierdOne's take on this has been very accurate from the get go, and he has never tried gloss over any bad news for the fans.
Bottom line is, if Joss is happy with this decision then so am I. He hasn't led us wrong so far and there's been no BS either.