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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?
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.
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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.
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)
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.
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.
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....
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.
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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".
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!
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.
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.
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
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Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Survey says....
Hmm.. looks like a tie between "What's Logan's Run?" and "Cowboy Neal".
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.
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...
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
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
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.
Like I just said in another post: "Those genres have been mixed for as long as the sci-fi genre has existed. Star Trek was originally called "wagon train to the stars", there's been numerous japa animés in the genre, etc."
Seriously, Even Toy Story touches that theme!
I have comix from the 80's where the Fantastic Four are fighting cowboys on rocket-horse-machine things. There were older jap shows with cowboys in space (late 70's or early 80's). As soon as people started writing stories with people in space, they wrote westerns in space. Its an old concept, Joss just went with it full blast instead of hiding it.
P.S. Loved Trigun and Cowboy Bebop : )
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
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.
I WANT MY SPACEWHORES NOW!
;-)
Inara was a space call girl, not some street hussy!
You can't take the sky from me...
They don't show any faster-than-light travel, but possibly that's just because it's boring.
I think they did, but they didn't use the Star Trek "stars wooshing in the background" effect. There's quite a few shots of Serenity in deep space, going from one world to another.
But we know absolutly nothing about its propuslsion systems, so its all conjecture for us!
You can't take the sky from me...
considering the impact he had on ep1, i think it's pretty clear that jar jar's a reaver... :>
ed
I would have loved to watch Whedon try and pitch this to the studios.
It would hardly be the most difficult pitch Whedon has had to make. Anyone who can start with the utter crap "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie, convince network execs to make a TV series out of it, and then have the show go on to be a wild success must be doing something right. At least with Firefly there is a small but devoted fan base, and DVD sales that greatly surpassed expectations.
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
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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