Sci-Fi Channel Picks Up Firefly

An anonymous reader writes "Firefly, a science fiction series that was canceled midway through its first season on Fox, has found a new home on the Sci Fi Channel. Fans of the cult-hit series Firefly will be pleased to learn that the show has been picked up by the Sci Fi Channel--just two months before the release of Serenity, a Universal Pictures film based on the series. Looks like they'll be airing all the ones we've already seen, plus 3 that never got aired the first time around. A bonus - They'll be seen in the correct order."

Comments

Will there be more episodes?

[Banner]

That's what I'd like to know. Maybe if Serenity does well in the theaters?

Re:Will there be more episodes?

[Rei]

Whedon: We will rule over this time slot, and we will call it... "This Time Slot".

Fox: I think we should call it... your grave!"

Whedon: Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Fox: Ha ha HA! Mine is an evil laugh...now die!

Re:Will there be more episodes?

[jdbo]

Can you cite something on that? I thought I had read that the contract specified a 3 film commitment (i.e. the studio could make up to 3 films if they wished to), subsequent to which the show could return to the air (if anyone wanted to pick it up, that is)

Re:Will there be more episodes?

[Oinos]

When negotiating for the rights to make a Firefly movie, Fox's contract specifically says that Joss can never bring the tv series back in any form. It did not, however, preclude additional feature films.

Actually, when Fox picks up a television program the contract that they make everyone sign says that Fox owns the broadcast rights to the series for ten years. This is Fox's idea of controlling what is shown on TV. If a show doesn't pan out the way Fox thinks it should, they can it, and no one else can pick it up. There was no stipulation about feature films in the broadcast contract, that's why Joss decided to take the story to the big screen.

If the Sci-Fi channel is showing the series, they would have had to buy out the broadcast contract from Fox. Assuming that the show pulls in some decent ratings, I wouldn't be surprised to see Joss writing a new season and production starting as early as this fall depending on availability of the cast.

Re:Will there be more episodes?

[Txiasaeia]

In other news, Joss Whedon announced his latest series "Bumblebee." A group of renegades are on the run from Feeble OXygen Corporation, led by Commander Melvin ("Mel") Richardson, a former officer in the Packers Independence Flotilla (i.e. the "Green Skins"). Other memorable characters include Chloe, the steely (but feminine) first mate that served under Commander Mel during the Independence war, Oregon, the wisecracking pilot whose won the heart of Chloe, and Mary Kay, the loveable grease-monkey-cum-sweetheart whose bubbly cheerfulness is her trademark.

Although actors such as Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Gina Torres, and Jewel Staite have signed on to the show, Whedon denies that the show has anything to do with his previous sci-fi drama, "Firefly." "They're two completely different insects!" Whedon said in a telephone interview. "They're both sci-fi shows, so there might be some similarities in that regard, but otherwise they're completely different. Promise!"

Sources have confirmed that Whedon will be singing the theme song for this show too, containing the lyrics "Can't never take away my blue clouds, y'hear?" Look for "Bumblebee" in Fall 2006 on the Sci-Fi channel.

Awesome...

[brxndxn]

I think it's about time networks start to realize they need to have a 3-season investment, at least, in order to establish a larger viewership. All these reality TV shows score big on their first season and then never add up once the hype is gone.

Also, changing the time every week and having them be interrupted by the 'MJ verdict' doesn't do much for people trying to set up a schedule around the shows. Ya, people have Tivo.. but then again, the networks aren't targeting those people anyway.

Re:Awesome...

[NanoGator]

"I think it's about time networks start to realize they need to have a 3-season investment, at least, in order to establish a larger viewership. All these reality TV shows score big on their first season and then never add up once the hype is gone."

Actually, they do realize it. The reason why 3 seasons is a magic number is because they end up with enough episodes to make money off of the airing of reruns. For them to cancel it when they did, they probably ran across some VERY bad numbers. Perhaps they realized they could spend that hour on a show that was more likely to succeed. Perhaps the ratings just weren't what they wanted given the cost of making the show. Perhaps a new fad came along that they really wanted to tap into.

It's hard to say. Sci-fi, however, is notoriously difficult to hold on to for a long period of time. It's expensive (compared to a reality show, for example) and, let's face it, sci-fi doesn't have the mass-market appeal we'd like it to. Shows like Star Trek and BSG are the exceptions, not the rules.

Yes, these shows get unfairly dumped. However, you have to remember that TV's a business, not an art form. It's a business built on the whims of a constantly changing mass-market audience. The original Star Trek series, for example, wasn't all that popular. Years after it ended, the 'space race' happened, and suddenly there was interest again. A few years later, bam, Star Trek: The Motion Picture came along. *That* wouldn't have happened if not for the success of both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third kind. (It was quite a shock that either of those movies did so well.) It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the numbers these guys use to figure out of a show is worth the risk or not are about as accurate as a Magic 8-ball. With the millions of dollars involved in producing a show like FireFly, I can't say I'm all that shocked they'd pull out when they did.

Misleading

[Knara]

Looks like they're just airing the original episodes in-order to help promote the upcoming movie (not a bad thing, mind you). When I hear "picked up" in relation to a TV show, I usually associate it with "making new episodes".

Re:what

[aussie_a]

whats next, updates on "where is the cast of cheers now?"

Ted Danson is in San Diego

Shelley Long is in Fort Wayne

Kirstie Alley is in Wichita

Nicholas Colasanto is in Providence (the place, not the show)

Rhea Perlman is in Brooklyn

John Ratzenberger is in Bridgeport

Oh fuck. That's where they were born. Screw it. You can look it up yourself to see where they are.

Re:New?

[AKAImBatman]

I wouldn't give up just yet. Sci-Fi picked up both Sliders and Stargate SG-1, and poured quite a bit of development money into both. Plus, the amount of money they spent of Battlestar Galactica and the Farscapre Mini-Series (another cancellend show, remember?) shows that the Sci-Fi channel will most certainly make new episodes if they smell money.

So everyone with a Neilson device, make sure you turn on every episode of FireFly! We need to make Sci-Fi think that FireFly is the hottest show since the original Star Trek got cancelled! ;-)

Woah...

[MagicDude]

First news that the Super Mario Brothers Super Show is being released on DVD, now this. Next think you'll be telling me is that they're bringing back crystal pepsi. Oh damn, just thinking about that makes me feel tingly...

Firefly Won't Be Returning To TV

[WombatControl]

...at least not for a long while.

Universal produced the show, but as a condition of picking up a series, a network gains the exclusive first rights to air the series on television. The rights to Firefly are still held by Fox, and Fox has expressed no interest in transferring those rights back.

Universal retains all the other rights, which is why Serenity got made, but unless someone's willing to cough up a very large amount of dough, it's unlikely that Fox would let their first-run TV contract drop.

For the love of God and all things holy.

[bucky0]

Please, let there be more episodes done. A friend of mine casually showed me the pilot movie (she bought the DVDs). Two days later, I had watched them all and craved more. I'm gonna echo everyone else's sentiment that I really wish that more of this would be on tv as opposed to whatever crap reality show is undergoing it's 15 seconds.

Oh, juh jen sh guh kwai luh duh jean-jan!

[Mateorabi]

Too bad the FOX execs were a bunch of BUN tyen-shung duh ee-DWAY-RO the first time arround.

Give the show to a network that knows what it's doing and appreciate what it has got.

Gag reel

[H_Fisher]

Bonus, you get all the extras, like the gag reel, and the behind the scenes stuff.

Actually, the *full* gag reel is floating around on the 'Net. It's about 2x longer than what you saw on the DVD, and contains quite a bit of profanity and one bit (a play on the opening credits) that would have been hard-core copyright infringement had it gone on the commercial DVD.

It's quite amusing. You can find it floating around p2p land, and I'm sure there's a torrent out there.

Re:Gag reel

[theoddbot]

Try http://fireflyfans.net/feature.asp?f=42.

Just wait till I've finished downloading it :)

Re:No clue...

[techno-vampire]

Would you be interested in a well written show with good acting? That's what Firefly was, and I've heard the movie is the same. I'm not a fan of the show because it's Sci-Fi, but because it's good, and I doubt I'm the only person who feels that way.

Re:the obvious question

[sangreal66]

I have to respectfully disagree and say that it was [adult swim] on cartoon network. They aired it for years late at night, rebuilt the fanbase, and then Fox suddenly "changed their minds".

It was both, actually.

Re:What?

[ceejayoz]

If people got that obsessed over Enterprise, they should this show.

I think a lot of the people who obsessed over Enterprise did so because of the words "Star Trek" before it.

You could make "Star Trek: Dog Turd" with a static shot of (literally) a pile of crap and you'd get people fighting cancellation, but the same folks would look at Firefly and go "wtf no technical manual? no technobabble? lame!"

Pass

[trawg]

After reading the overwhelmingly positive ejaculations about this series on Slashdot and a few other places, I thought I'd check it out. It was described as a 'space western' in one thread I read and that was the phrase that stuck in my mind.

When I heard the phrase 'space western', I imagined that it was a bit more metaphorical - like, it was the Space Rush days and everyone was getting out into space, it was rough and tumble, and all that jazz.

However, I was (somewhat unpleasantly) surprised to see that it was simply that - a western, set in space. That was pretty much it.

I didn't dig the main character; I thought he was bland and boring. I hated the swearing in Chinese; after watching Deadwood I find just about everything else is completely boring if its sanitised for a G rating. The sexual tension between the main character and the 'companion' is like, straight out of a highschool TV series, dude. The only common thread throughout the whole story was the doctor and his sister, which didn't progress enough to keep me interested. Token lesbian scene was a bit lame, too.

Special effects were nice and some of the scripts were vaguely entertaining; the character of Jane (Jayne?) was the only one that I really WANTED to keep seeing.

Anyway, I'm sure this comment won't see the light of day as it seems everyone else on Slashdot digs it, but that's my 2c.