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.'"

Comments

Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet

[Sancho]

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.

Re:Why is this important? This is the 3rd time

[Knight2K]

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.

Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet

[Monkelectric]

well, that they killed it specifically as a marketing technique to sell DVDs?

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.