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Second Round of Serenity Screenings Sold Out
j1ggl3x writes "From a Rotten Tomatoes news article:
'Following the sell-out success of the May 5th pre-screenings, creator Joss Whedon recently announced that more advance previews of his movie Serenity would appear at twenty theaters in twenty cities, this time on May 26th. By the next morning, well before the official list of cities was posted, fans on the Serenity movie site and elsewhere had diligently located half the listings through trial and error and several of the locations were already sold out. Serenity hits theaters on September 30th.'"
The question will be whether die-hard fans will be the ONLY ones who see the show when it gets a wide release. The show pretty clearly had a huge fanbase (given the record sales on Amazon and pre-screenings that sell out before they're announced) but even if every fan sees the movie once, it won't be enough to warrant a sequel if no one else sees it.
I was lucky enough to attend one of the first 10 screenings. I think the film is good enough to make it on its own except for the character development. Firefly fans won't have a problem here, but with 9 characters to deal with, there just isn't enough time in a 2 hour movie to really introduce them all, much less give any real information about them which would let them shine. I hope this doesn't detract from the film for the general audience.
Let's see... 1 million Dvd's sold in a day at an average of $40 per set..
5 million sold since it has been released.
So, Fox has made somewhere around $200 million off that series so far..
Most companies consider $200 million a fairly decent amount to make off a series that has had a multiyear run.. For a show that was cancelled before it even got a run is pretty far removed from the norm.
You really need to do that math, but that would require a bit more processing than you seem to be able to manage.
This particlar vocal sub-group put a lot of money on the table.
Networks are in the "Make Money" business. Fox and a number of other networks now make more off the DVD sales on a series than on the broadcast of the series.
My sister managed to get me a ticket, too. I'd seen only a few episodes prior and thought the movie was amazing. I agree that for the main characters, though, there's little character development. Maybe it's Joss's plan to get more people into the TV series by making it necessary to see the show for a full understanding of the movie.
are up to over $250 dollars for a pair for the DC show.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
One of the obvious reasons is that Firefly was a science fiction television show, which is generally a fairly nerdy entertainment. In addition, Firefly is generally regarded as a very good science fiction show that some might mention in the same breath as Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, and Babylon 5.
You probably could argue that TV is generally lame, and that is difficult to dispute. However, I've found Joss Whedon's work to be generally better than most of the shows out there. He deals with a lot of interesting themes in a very entertaining way without talking down to his audience.
More than that, he takes risks with his work. He kills off beloved characters if it serves his story, regardless of the fan reaction. He did a show that was almost entirely without dialogue and an hour-long musical episode.
These approaches could have ended up as cheap gimmicks, but usually they worked really well. I think a lot of people want to see entertainment that does try to be different. I think geeks and nerds are used to seeing value in things that other people might not understand.
Is a sci-fi movie ultimately stuff that matters? Perhaps not compared perhaps to environmental issues, war, and politics. But life has to be about more than that. Art, music, and culture have their places as well. Wide availablity and low accessibility don't necessarily disqualify popular mediums from being art and being important in its own way.
It sounds like you haven't really seen any of Mr. Whedon's work. I suggest you rent a few of the Buffy TV series DVD's or the Firefly collection and try it. You might find you like it, or at the very least, have a more informed dislike of it.
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In X-Windows the client serves YOU!
I missed FireFly when it was being broadcast.
After hearing about it, I downloaded about 9 episodes. Loved them.
Then I heard that the DVD set was available on Amazon for 35$. Erased my downloaded copies and bought the DVDs.
I would of never bought the DVDs without having pirated the episodes first.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
It is possible, and I like the way your conspiratorial mind works. However, they could have sold season 1 DVDs and still made a eason 2.
The inside story is, that FireFly was the "baby" of an ousted executive. If FireFly did well then there would be all sorts of questions along the lines of "Why are were firing guys who are making hit shows?"
The solution was well documented -- tank the show by showing them out of order, not advertising them, and then changing the show times so you couldn't catch them. I remember seeing the adverts on TV and going "that looks COOL!!" and then I couldn't find it.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I used to work with one of the guys that was one of the animators on Titan AE at the Fox studios in Phoenix. He said that it was rather disappointing what was happening. Everyone at the studio knew they were being laid off and the studio was going to close after the movie was finished. As it progressed, people either were leaving or being laid off as they were no longer needed. Right at the end of the movie's development, there was nothing but a skeleton crew there. Fox just didn't care about Titan AE and didn't give it much of a chance (sounds like the series that is currently being discussed). As such, there was not much put into the movie by the people working on it. I'd imagine that played a role in the movie's success/failure.
Amen!
Joss disocvered that if you combine angsty/whiny dialogue with actors who can angrily stare at a camera lens you can pretend you have something well written, granted in this world of $300 million B-movies it probably does seem to stand above the rest, but in the end we just have another Roger Corman, applying the same equasion over and over and over-and-over...
If "Serenity" is good, and there's no reason to think it won't be, why not create some buzz and pay for the screenings at the same time? The distributors know that the rabid fans will pay to see this movie early, and they're hoping that they'll tell all their friends about it. If you can create a buzz going into summer, people will look forward to it even while being bomabrded with the usual summer blockbusters.
I think this is a brilliant move on the distributor's part, and I hope they have a few more between now and September to keep the buzz going.