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Watch the First 9 Minutes of Serenity
An anonymous reader writes "As reported on FireflyFans.net, Universal is attempting further promotion of the sci-fi action film Serenity by making the first 9 minutes of the movie available online. The clip contains the opening backstory that sets an Alliance assassin on the trail of the ship's crew; it's an effective hook. On Yahoo movies, Serenity is ranked as the number 1 film currently in theaters and is hanging in a top-ten spot in the highest rated movies of all time. Slashdot has previously covered Orson Scott Card's review, the film's opening, an interview with Joss Whedon, and much more. It's all out of love..."
That's odd. I saw Serenity last weekend with friends who had never seen Firefly and they had not trouble keeping up with what was going on. Yes, they lost some of the richness of the story, but they did a fine job of filling in the blanks for most reasonably observant people.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Correction to the submission: this is being released by United International Pictures, the company responsible for international release of Serenity. Since UIP is partially owned by Universal, it might be seen as semantics, but UIP has a distinct marketing plan for the movie from that of Universal.
It's also important to note, because it might seem like odd timing for Universal to release new marketing materials for a movie already released - it might even seem a move of desperation to get "butts in seats" before it leaves theaters... but it makes more sense as new marketing released by UIP for a movie they are opening today or within the next few weeks.
This is not something that happens by accident. They are ACTIVELY dissuading linux users from watching the teaser.
Whoever is in charge of marketing has no clue.
Which one is it: a carefully designed conspiracy against Linux users, or the end result of a naive marketing department that doesn't understand that a large chunk of their target audience uses something other then Windows?
If I had to make a bet, I'd put my money on the latter. I highly doubt there's someone sitting around saying 'Yarr! Let's get those Linux users! That'll teach 'em for being different!". I'd guess the company providing the streaming video brought the claim of 'being able to provide high-quality on-demand streaming video to broadband Internet users using a unique process which makes unauthorized duplication near impossible' to the marketing department for the film. The 'Vividas' company most likely neglected the fact that they wouldn't be able to reliably accommodate users of alternative OSes, and it never occurred to the folks marketing the film to ask.
The Internet is generally stupid