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Whedon Calls Death Knell For Firefly
Ant writes "Entertainment Weekly is reporting on the end of Firefly." From the article: "Alas, Whedon's fond memories are also tainted by Serenity's status as a franchise nonstarter; despite Universal's best marketing efforts, the film only mustered $25 million. 'In the end, it was what it was: a tough sell,' says Whedon, adding that it appears the Firefly saga has reached its conclusion. He has no regrets -- and he's moving on."
Or a question really, then a thought.
:(
Why go straight to a movie? Why not back to television. With a movie you only have one chance at redemption. With a series you have several. Make a few more episodes, get picked up by the SciFi channel and let it ride. I loved the Firefly series, but I didn't care for the movie. Yeah, it had great parts (so do some ugly hookers), but overall it both sucked and blowed!!
I guess I will be looking for that made for TV movie of Angel. And don't tell me it will never happen, because I already know.
I guess that stuff like this is the reason they make scotch.
I mean, announce the death the day the DVD comes out? DVD sales of the show was what picked it back up in the first place...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
...I already have the "Firefly" DVD and I will be buying the "Serenity" DVD today after work.
Hmmmm. You don't think they timed this, do you?
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Dammit! I was hoping Firefly would be the perfect test-case for the iTunes episode-selling model. I think its perfect for situations like this - if the fans really want it, they can vote directly with their dollars, and the hell with the myopic networks. Alas, a little too late it would seem.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
But, Serenity was not all it could, or should have been.
The series had a lot of potential, and in trying to please too many folks, the movie lacked the ability to measure up to it.
I saw it once, and would rather watch the episodes of the TV show...
-merlyn
I watched the movie without previously knowing there was a series as well. My impression was: nice effects, good plot, the director should be shot as he can't tell a story and ruined it all.
Sci-Fi is about breaking the constraints and tired plots of conventional stories. This means fantastic things like aliens, robots, artificial intelligence and time travel. Not rehashing the stale concept that the rest of the universe really isn't so different from home and we'll never really evolve past the emotions and biases we've got right now.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Even Joss' comments must be taken with a grain of salt. I sincerly doubt that this will be the end of Firefly - considering that currenty, Amazon.com ranks Serenity as the #1 selling DVD, with the complete Firefly series coming in at #6 (again). DVD sales on this franchise are through the roof, and have been the fulcrum upon which the future of the franchise balances.
Call me what you will, but I don't think we've heard the last of this yet.
But of course, I could be wrong...
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
...that the movie only made $25m, and that marketing is being blamed. I saw the movie almost as soon as it came out because I had seen the trailer and was hooked - I had never heard of 'Firefly' until I read about the movie (I don't watch much TV). I really thought it was one of the best movies I have seen in a long time, even though I still haven't seen an episode of 'Firefly' and I'm ambivalent about 'Buffy' at best, so you can't call me a Whedonite. Shows what I know.
NeverEndingBillboard.com
NeverEndingBillboard.com
It's not going to be Firefly but eventually we're going to see something that does fit into the niche that I see so many Firefly fans (I refuse to call you people "Browncoats") wishing their show could get into. That would be the "paid for by the fans" niche which I think we're heading for with some property eventually. Look at the fan made stuff being done for Star Trek New Voyages right now and think about how cheaply that's being made. Then look at the estimates for what it was going to cost those poor misguided bastards who wanted to finance another season of Enterprise. Somewhere in between those two numbers (much closer to the New Voyages price I'm sure) is going to be the spot where fans pay for their show.
Production values won't be what you'd like them to be but they'll be damned close. Actors will get (low paying) work on these shows and some of them will go on to bigger and better things. It will be like a step below working in soaps or something.
Firefly won't be the show that does this because it's owned by Fox and so you can't keep it alive without paying them. This business model doesn't allow for that or, at the very least it doesn't allow for it on the scale that Fox is expecting bank. It'll be more like Open Source Television.
Fans of Science Fiction should just get together and cut the studios out. It needs to be an original story. Nothing studio owned will work. The guys getting traffic doing Star Trek episodes for free are the place to start. If people can get together and make fan based shows like New Voyages then they can use that as a stepping stone to an original story Sci-Fi pay per episode series.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Sadly, it had a LOT of competition for screen time. It was only in theaters for a few weeks, which didn't give it much time for repeat viewers to build up sales. I remember wanting to go see it for a 4th time, and it wasn't playing anywhere, AND it wasn't in the cheap theaters yet either, that was weird.
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Fox is the poster child for why the movie studios have problems. They had an executive who "didn't get it" with Family Guy ruin the original series by actively sabotaging its timing slots. Then it sells over a million DVD sets after Cartoon Network picks it up and does reruns. With Firefly, they put the damn series out of order and wonder why it failed miserably. A little hard to follow a linear story line without a linear scheduling... assholes.
Some people think that a la carte cable is bad for consumers, but I'd gladly pay $30 for Sci-Fi, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, the History Channel and MusicChoice. That'd be only $20 less than full digital cable, and if they'd throw in a "Sci-Fi 2, 3, 4" like they have with MTV, I'd glady go up to $40. The TV and movie studios are phenominally stupid, such as the case of Firefly where they spent obscene amounts of money producing it only to let some executive rip the sequence to shreds for shits and giggles.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Blasphemy. This is one of the best television seasons for quality shows that I can remember!
Two words: Battlestar Galactica.
It is (coming from a rapid Firefly fanboy) so much better on every level except comedic. Not even going out on a limb I will say that it's the best science fiction show that I have ever seen on TV. That includes all flavors of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Space: Above and Beyond, Clone Wars, Farscape, and a bunch of other shows whose quality is less than or equal to Earth2 that I won't mention. I'll actually go out on a slight limb and declare that it's best science fiction that I've ever seen in any moving picture form. Anyway, rent or buy the first season and be blown away.
Other than that: Veronica Mars. My Name is Earl (almost as funny as...). Arrested Development. Rome. Supernatural is fun. The Amazing Race is always good for a laugh. Family Guy.
C'mon. You can practically throw random darts at the tv schedule and find a great show.
"despite Universal's best marketing efforts, the film only mustered $25 million."
I call bullshit on this one. Most people I know never heard of the movie. When I went to the theater, there was no movie poster nor a listing on the Marque. The screen number that it was showing in, rather than having a lit sign over the number, had a hand written tag taped to the light, and this is no "small" theater. This was the largest in the area.
I'm not even going to defend the movie, because it had it's critics, but it's certainly far better in many ways to other very popular films this year, and it had a psychotic fanbase. The fact that I know several Firefly fans that didn't even KNOW the movie had already come and gone before they found out about the DVD just further goes toward making me think their "best marketing efforts" were utter rubbish.
If I were the the paranoid type I'd say Hollywood intentionally made it a point to show fans with this movie that yelling loudly about the things you want to see will get you what you want. They tell YOU what you're going to watch, not the other way around. It's the only way they can use the media to brainwash the masses. It just doesn't work as well when we actually get some say so in the matter.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
My 2 year old LOVES that theme song. Maybe because he has Cerebal Palsy, and one of the few words in his vocabulary so far is "Me". We sing together every Friday when it comes on Sci-Fi channel; he shouts "ME" in time with the song.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
couldn't use the name Firefly which is why they used the name "Serenity".
If you listen carefully, you'll notice that the word 'Firefly' isn't said at all in the film.
I DID like that. because it killed off a character who's actor made comments to the effect that he didn't really care about the role. He committed the cardinal sin of sci-fi: He admitted he had no idea what the buttons did. He was proud of it.
More importantly though, it showed that the deep magick that typically protects the protagonists had failed. It made the rest of the film much more exciting.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Two words: Battlestar Galactica.
Of course, Serenity was *in* BG.
see: http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=2&t=15563
-=Maggie Leber=-
(from Hand Puppet Movie Theatre)
...WHAT.
Wash: Oh yeah? I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar!
Giant Spike: You're a dead leaf now, dude.
Wash: *TOTALLY UNEXPECTED IMPALEMENT*
Fans:
Zoe: No way did that just happen. Simon can fix this!
Fans: OMGWTFFJDIAJDJASKDJAKLDJA
Mal: Run like hell now, strangle Joss Whedon later!
Fans: *WEEP*
Don't put advice in your sig.
Do you *really* want to have a whole long discussion about this here? Well, I have no self-control so I'm going to go for it
1. If anything I felt that it showed the core audience that this was not an episode of a TV series, where much could be expected to end up the same at the end as at the beginning.
I suppose that's valid, but people campaigned hard to get Firefly back. Serenity was not Firefly. For some people that's fine. For others it's not fine: the loved Firefly and they missed those aspects of it that they had fallen in love with. The most quoted aspect is warmth. The show, and the ship itself, seemed colder in the movie. And for others it's just main characters. You don't kill Han Solo off in A New Hope because the character is so great for the movie. Killing him off in Return of the Jedi would have been a bummer, but not nearly as bad a decision.
I don't see how new viewers can have been a factor in the decision to let them die. New viewers would have gotten the same effect of seriousness if new characters had been added and then killed. There was no way to add anymore new characters, Wheddon had a hard enough time getting all of the essential cast in (some say he failed at that, but with 9 characters to introduce again I think he did well). So in order for the show to be a Hollywood action flick with an ensemble case, SOMEONE had to die. That's the formula, and in the sense that making this a Hollywood action flick is for the newbies, killing Wash as part of that final-action tension-raising plot tool was definately for those newbies.
2. Also, River had been shown as having a 'super weapon' mode in the Firefly series, where she closed her eyes and killed three armed troops with three shots in about one second, so the movie was not 'turning' her into something new.
In this case you're preaching to the choir. I personally LOVED that scene - it brings a lump to my throat every time River says "My turn" and then goes off and kicks major Reaver butt. Plus the action sequences are just incredible with her - some of the best I've ever seen. I was just trying to add that for the sake of completeness because I know a lot of fans disliked it. And they have a point too, it would have been hard to have had characters like Jayn and Zoe matter so much as the hired muscle now that River the kick-ass assasin can do more damage than both of them combined. And any attempt to have limited her powers would have seemed a little too artificial and comic-bookish. She just recovered from being nut-case, how are they going to make her be one again?
All in all I had a really hard time liking the movie because of what happened to Wash. But that was because I wanted to see more movies. I was hoping the movie would do well and they'd relaunch the series. Or try something genuinely ground-breaking and do direct-to-DVD episodes. But the movie was sweet, and now that it's the conclusion to the series I like it even more.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
The only part im sad about is it seems Joss had plans for 2 more and if thats true then there must have been more plot to explore but now we'll never know
This reminds me of something which others here might find amusing... after having recently watched the Firefly episodes, the episode commentaries, and the movie, I somehow got the half-baked idea that Inara is a vampire, or a succubus, or some other sort of supernatural creature. Whedon's other shows, Buffy and Angel, are pretty obviously in the same universe, but there's nothing solid tying Firefly to that same universe... or is there?
The evidence I collected is pretty poor/circumstantial, but as a whole it's rather interesting to muse about, I think:
* In the "Out of Gas" episode, there's a scene where the doctor (Simon) and Inara are chatting about their inevitable demise. On the commentary the director of that episode mentions that there was a clue to something about Inara which didn't get expanded on in the show. During this scene the following dialog takes place:
Inara: I love this ship. I have from the first moment I saw it.
Simon: I just don't want to die on it.
Inara: I don't want to die at all.
I might be imagining things, but IMHO Inara sounds kind of sinister when she says that, as if she really doesn't plan on dying.
* I might be wrong on this, but I can't recall any time that Inara appears outside in the sun with exposed skin. The one time I recall her being outside was in "Trash," where she appears outside wearing a veil. (Now that I think about it though, there might be an exception in "Shindig" during the duel...)
* In the pilot, when Firefly passes by Reavers and everybody thinks they're about to die, Inara pulls out a little case which looks like a suicide kit. In the commentary the director says it's not a suicide kit, but actually a secret about Inara which would've been revealed later. It doesn't look like the sort of weapon you'd use to fight off Reavers, so perhaps it's something supernatural?
* In the commentary, one of the directors mentions how Inara was supposed to be played in a way which showed her as having more wisdom than someone her age to have, wisdom beyond her years. This could just mean that she's smart, but could also have other connotations.
* In Serenity, Inara fights using a weapon which rapidly switches between being a bow and a crossbow. The rapid switching is probably a blooper, but in any case, a bow/crossbow is a pretty anachronistic weapon, even for Firefly.
So yeah, the "evidence" I have is pretty fragmentary, and there's alternative explanations for just about all of it. It's pretty obvious though that Whedon had some sort of deep, dark secret in Inara's past that he didn't have a chance to reveal. What are your thoughts? Can anyone else think of things to support/refute this?
There's more to it than that. If you've been involved with the industry then you know that personal politics, whims, and downright mean-spiritedness have a great deal to do with cancellations and refusals to sell as well. This is an industry where profit often *isn't* the bottom line and where individuals will often torpedo working projects to push a personal agenda, or simply to stick it to someone they don't like.
For example, it's a rather well-known (in the industry) fact that "Dark Angel" wasn't cancelled due to ratings but because a certain powerful executive (a woman who still works in the business) harbored a very public hatred of Jessica Alba. Public in the sense of that it made the rounds in business as a recurring bit of gossip, not public in the sense that you, Joe Smith, know about it. She made it one of her primary goals to sink that show any way she could. What's mildly amusing about this is that she's acquired a reputation for doing this sort of thing, and at least a half-dozen cancellations are attributed to her vindictiveness because the shows featured a woman she didn't like. Not that she doesn't like Ms. Alba because of some unpleasant personal interaction (they've never met, to my knowledge), but because Ms. Alba is extraordinarily gorgeous - and she despises gorgeous women. Especially strong-willed gorgeous women, and most of all strong-willed gorgeous women that fellow male executives drool over and talk about to each other within the range of this vipers hearing.
No names, but her pecadillos have reached the point where a bit of google searching can turn up the very same info I've just related, along with some of the shows that've been on her hit list (apart from "Dark Angel").
This is not an unusual thing. Many shows do just fine ratings-wise, yet get cancelled despite the fact that they make money. The reasons are usually rooted in the malicious behavior of executives more enamored of power than of money. Others are appalling (e.g., "Enterprise") but are kept because someone on the show (in this case, Berman) knows where some very, very embarrassing bodies are buried.
When it comes to television, don't attribute to stupidity what can instead be ascribed to petty evil. Nine times of out ten the reasons are firmly rooted in petty evil.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Funny, I just watched "Shindig" last night. In the dueling scene, they were outside but under the shade of some large trees. I don't know the rules for Vampires in Whedon's universe so I don't know if that supports your theory or not.
Now my thoughts: Whedon definitely made the "Companions" very alluring and mysterious. They had this great political power or is it an upper hand (in "Shindig" she rotorts to the guy who Mal beats in the duel "It doesn't work like that! You will never have the services of another Companion ever again" (big time paraphrase)? In the begining of that episode, she was in a filthy bar filled with shady folks sitting up on a stool looking very regal. One would think that would be very bad place for a hot upper class woman to be sitting, and she was very relaxed with no worries. Does this mean she's got some upper hand (super weapon, powers, just being a certified companion makes people lay off?) or does it mean that she is relaxed when Mal is around to protect her or does it mean she isn't very bright? Probably not the last one.
Anyway, she was an interesting character with a lot of potential for where it could go (I never thought about your suggestion before which goes to show that potential) and she will make a great Wonder Woman if Whedon decideds to cast her.
I only mod up parents of "mod parent up" posts...
In general, I dislike sci-fi that says "this is utopian" and/or "this is despotic". Sci-fi, for me, is about projecting ahead. Extrapolating. (No wonder I liked that novel.) If I want to listen to worshipful praise, there are plenty of channels that specialize in that. As for demonizing, there's always CSPAN. If the far distant future is a rehash of a Nader speech, it might be a good thing nobody has perfected cryogenics.
Oh, I expect that the far distant future really will have elements of libertarian thought. It'll also have elements of socialist thought, communist thought, feudal thought, conservative thought, etc. Same as our politics of today have elements of the political systems of ancient Greece, ancient Rome and elements of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. We tend to build on what we have, which means not only will we still keep what we have (or how would we build on it?) but what we have will not keep still (we're a species of sub-creators, impermanence is the essence of our being, change is the only constant).
Few things are wholly wrong, even less is wholly right, black-and-white thinking is a greater source of evil than any specific system. Any system can be made to work, with sufficient effort. Rigid thinking and bipolar societies are incapable of long-term survival, no matter what the effort.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)