Slashdot Mirror
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.
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..)
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!
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
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
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
considering the impact he had on ep1, i think it's pretty clear that jar jar's a reaver... :>
ed
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