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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
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.
Oh come on, he happens to make this statement on the very day the DVD is set to be released? Sounds like a marketing gimmick to me... If the DVD sales are amazing - and they might be, considering the cult status of the show - he can then announce a miraculous comeback.
Personally, I liked the show, I really liked the movie, and I can see why both failed in the financial sense (bad marketing for both, episodes out of order and plot development much too slow in the show).
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
"It was a leaf on the wind." *CRUNCH*
I guess you can stop the signal :(.
Fox had the rights to the TV show and would not allow it to be made. Universal optioned the rights to a movie but couldn't use the name Firefly which is why they used the name "Serenity".
It would've been wonderful for more episodes of the show but the moguls wouldn't have it.
Ah well, it was a great show and it was fun while it lasted. I've got no regrets for supporting the show as much as I had.
You can't take the sky from me.
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.
I know a lot of people found themselves enthralled in the whole "cowboys in space" theme, but why I cannot fathom.
It's not just "cowboys in space". It's about a man who is struggling to stay true to his heart. It's about the crew that grows up around him. It's about extreme civil disobedience in an opressed society. It's about doing what's necessary and about doing what's right. Space is just the scenery.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
This article has been linked to a lot over the past few days on various Firefly/Serenity boards. The quotes from Joss have clearly been taken out of context, a quick read-through of the other interviews he's given over the past few days show this. He's found closure because he got to tell the story he wanted to tell from the beginning. But he's said that if he had the chance to tell another story in the 'verse he turn right around and do it. Specifically, he's hinted that another movie would reveal that bounty hunter Jubal Early from the last episode of Firefly is very much alive. I'm a Browncoat but I don't stick my fingers in my ears and go "lalala I can't hear you" when people suggest the franchise has come to an end. But this article is simply trolling. FYI, Joss has confirmed that he's going to write another series of Serenity comics, and has been saying for months that the DVD sales of Serenity will determine whether the franchise will be seen on screens (big or small) in the future. EW are just quoting Joss out of context to stir up some contraversy. I for one am very unimpressed.
This is a fairly misleading headline/summary/article stub. In (numerous) interviews over the past week or so, Joss says in most of them that any future Firefly/Serenity-age would depend on the DVD sales being particularly big.
"It would depend on huge numbers from the DVD," writer/director Whedon allows. "Obviously, we are still shy of making our money back from the box office. But we are within shouting distance. Still, it would have to blow up pretty huge for a sequel to be called for.
"Mind you, stranger things have happened. And they do seem to happen to me. So it's not like I'm shutting the door." -- Toronto Star interview
"The, um, the movie is finished. And the story is told. The world is not finished. There's more to tell, but that's always the case with everything I do and whether I get the chance to tell [it] or not it is up to somebody else. So I made sure that this movie had completion and didn't feel like a glorified prequel. It's its own piece and it wraps everything up. I have a sense of closure that I never had, and I can walk away satisfied. But if somebody tells me not to walk away, I'll turn right back around." -- Comcast Movies interview
This EW article seems to take the stance that since Whedon is working on projects other than Firefly/Serenity and is taking a realistic view towards their finances, he clearly has abandoned them, despite the fact that his other projects have been in the pipe for some time.
We won't make it and we can't take the chance that someone else will make it, it will be a success and we will be shown to have made yet another bad decision.
If we don't want it no-one can have it.
Actually, it's more like "We won't make it, and we won't allow anyone else to make it, because it's ours. We don't care that it might make or lose money for someone else. It's our football, and nobody else gets to play with it."
This is the standard attitude among publishers of pretty much anything.
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!
I never really got into Buffy though I often saw it and enjoyed it, especially the "Grrr...argh" zombie at the end of every episode. Same with Angel, though I thought that was a much better show but only caught a few episodes. I heard Firefly was a good show and thought "what the hell" and bought the DVD, loved it. Until I watched it I didn't even know who Joss Whedon was, or that the show was made by the guy who made Buffy and Angel. "all" the computer nerds and sci-fi geeks (I'm one myself, what of it?) didn't jump on because of Joss, so stop throwing around accusations like we only love it because of its creator because that's gorram bullshit.
Firefly is obviously not a huge hit.
Firefly the series is the 6th most popular DVD sale at Amazon.com and Serenity is the most popular DVD sale on Amazon.com today. How do you define a hit?
"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.
Sci Fi is not owned by Fox, it is owned by NBC.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
I honestly can't remember the last time a Universal film did well. Even King Kong (which I saw today and is overlong and indulgent) is taking in below expectation. Warner and Disney and Fox all have their successes, but Universal and Paramount have both been struggling recently.
Serenity got near to no publicity here. I go to the cinema most weeks through the Summer and only knew thw film was coming out because I read Slashdot and PA. Universal really didn't do their job here.
If Firefly doesn't stop now, then how else are we going to have Firefly: The Next Generation here in twenty years, complete with the new River/Jane-daughter wise-cracking empath, a male companion, a cyborg mechanic, and the psychotic-chained-up Reaver named "Thudd" for comedic relief?
Actually the movie has grossed 38 million, one million short of the budget. Heres the industry rule of thumb. Box office is 1/5 of the total income from a movie, once you include DVD sales, and showings on television. Production budget is 1/3 of the cost of the movie once you figure in marketing and distribution costs. So the movie cost 117 million and will make about 190 million when all is said and done. Rumor has it they skimped a lot on the marketing, so it will actually be quite a bit more profitable than that. Also, Serenity is the number one DVD sale on Amazon today, so DVD sales may be a lot more than expected. Anyone who thinks it was a "flop" does not know what they are talking about. Not that it was a huge success, as movies go.
It was poorly planned. They tried to keep too many secrets from the audience, which just wound up making the show hard to get attached to. Compare it to lost: lost only gives you a few mysteries at a time, and always wraps up a few before delivering the next batch. Firefly really needed better writers and better planning.
You couldn't be more wrong. I've seen both shows. Lost has mediocre writing and weak character development. I have not seen a single innovative element to the writing of Lost. Firefly had excellent and innovative writing, including some of the the best examples of characters not understanding one another without dumbing it down so much as to seem unbelievable.
The reason Lost is a success and Firefly is not is because Lost is marketed to hell and back by some fairly sharp people. Firefly was intentionally sabotaged by executives with a grudge. Do you really think Lost would be a success if they aired the episodes out of order and changed the time it was on three times during it's first season, and they pre-empted it with sports multiple times?
Don't give up on it yet. Firefly fans need to buy the DVD when it comes out to show the companies how they can REALLY make money off the series. Of course, Fox would probably be too stubborn to part with TV rights no matter how much money was waved under their noses. :-(
So we have to make this movie a MOVIE success on DVD, or it's curtains for the series for good.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Before seeing it, I was hoping Serenity would have done better so wed get sequels or maybe even have Firefly come back to TV (although I never really beleived the latter would ever happen)
That said, after seeing Serenity, I felt it is a great ending to Firefly.
The big dark secret of the Alliance was revealed (although im sure there are others, and this finally explains the reevers), they're no longer going after Simon and River. We find out a bunch of stuff about River. River finally has a real place in the crew (as the new pilot) and it seems she is less insane now that the truth about the reevers was revealed
While I'd love to find out more about Book, it seems pretty clear he was like the assassin in the movie before he became a shephard, i still feel Serenity was a good ending and it left me satisfied.
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
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He robbed from the rich, and gave to the poor
:) )
Stood up to the man, and gave him what for
Our love for him now ain't hard to explain
The hero of Canton, the man they call Jayne!
(sorry - you sing your song, I'll sing mine
I spent the evening flickering into your darkness.
If only pigs had wings
:)
Come on, what kind of browncoat are you? The appropriate responses would be:
"If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak right now."
or:
"If only I had a magical wish-granting plank."
fortune-firefly is your friend.
I spent the evening flickering into your darkness.
If you listen carefully, you'll notice that the word 'Firefly' isn't said at all in the film.
"Ensign: We got a pos on a retinal--man carrying her out is Malcolm Reynolds, captains a Firefly-class transport ship 'Serenity'. Bound by law five times..."
It's in the script. I'll check my DVD when it gets here this week.
-=Maggie Leber=-
Joss Whedon quotes:
''I should say I'm above reading reviews,'' he says. ''But I would be lying.''
''In the end, it was what it was: a tough sell,'' says Whedon
As for Serenity, ''I have closure,'' he says. ''And now, I can have it in my home which means that finally I can actually stop working on it.''
Wow, how enlightening. Not a fucking word outta Joss's mouth about the end of Firefly (as opposed to Serenity - the movie.) Sure we have some screwball reporter's interpretation of whatever was said in the interview. Some say the reporter is paraphrasing him when he said that even if there is no more Firefly, the movie at least has some closure. For the number of times Joss talked about ideas for the future (ex. about Jubal Early - "Oh, I know he survived.") and how DVD sales will help determine Firefly's future, it's hard to imagine him totally giving up on the Firefly universe. Until I see exactly what Joss said, I have a real hard time swallowing this story whole.
On a side note, I am a rabid fan. Firefly is Joss Whedon's masterpiece so far. Astonishing X-Men is alright, Angel was good, and Buffy never really drew me in, but I do plan to watch my brother's copy of the series sometime. But if Joss is giving up on Firefly for good, he is throwing away the crown-fucking jewels , imho (which matters not, i am well aware...)
Thanks for letting me rant. This article is just really ticking me off right now.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4966&cid=11336 63
This is straight from Joss himself on Whedonesque: All right, now I have to jump in and set the record straight. EW is a fine rag, but they do take things out of context. Obviously when I said I had 'closure', what I meant was "I hate Serenity, I hated Firefly, I think my fans are stupid and Nathan Fillion smells like turnips." But EW's always got to put some weird negative spin on it. But so we're clear once and for all: If you read a quote saying "I'd love to do more in this 'verse with these actors in any medium" all I'm saying is that Nathan has a turnipy odor. It's not his fault, he doesn't eat a lot of them but everyone else in the cast noticed it and tht's not really something I'm prepared to deal with any more. And Jewel said outright she wouldn't do scenes with him except stuff like the SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER funeral scene which was outside in a high SPOILER wind. So if I do manage to find another incarnation for my beloved creation, it will have been totally against my will. I hope that clears everything up. Oh, and when I say I want to do a Spike movie, it means I have a bunion on my toe. -joss (by which I mean Tim) (no, actually me.) joss | December 21, 02:12 CET You see? EW can stop stirring up contraversy and just bugger off for all I care.
Talk about a flashback. This was the most common thing I heard on the boards "they live in a dangerous world and killing wash made that world more realistic".
But I think that's really superficial. First of all, realism isn't the goal of entertainment. Realism is boring - we spend 1/3 our lives unconcious. That's real. Try that for a movie. When people say they want a movie to be "real" they mean they want it to be an immersive experience. This is something that fans of schindler's list and braveheart have in common with fans of the original star wars: we all want the movies to SEEM real, but not really be real.
And so the problem with killing Wash to me was that it DIDN'T help immerse me in the world. We've already seen one village decimated by reavers, the recording of another woman raped to death by reavers, AN ENTIRE F***ING PLANET where everyone's dead, every one the crew has ever met has died, one of the crew die, a lot of extra people die, and we're about to see Mr. Universe die. Oh and by the way the captain has threatened to start shooting his own crew. So for me, anyway, the whole "dangerous world" point had already been made.
What really bugs me, however, is that people act as though realism means people dying. How many people die in a real war? That are shot, I mean. In Iraq there's like what, 9 injured that survive to every one that dies? And yet in movies it's binary. You are shot and you either live or you die. So to me it seems amazingly hollow and superficial to be like "people dying is realistic". No, people GETTING HURT is realistic. When was the last time you saw a show or a movie where a main character got hurt and had to learn to live with the disability. I mean aside from the sub-genre where that IS the plot most characters exist in this crazy world where you're alive or you're dead. Could Wash have been paralyzed, lost an arm or a leg? THAT would have been realistic and challenging - but the truth is that that's not what we want in our movies - no matter how dark of a tone we're after.
I'm not desperately trying to say "why did they have to kill him", I'm saying that a world where bullets either kill you or you make a full recovery is just as escapist as a world where none of the hero's die. I would like to see a movie, this or any other, where a character suffers a serioues, permenant injury and the show goes on. That's not the whole plot, he never recovers, he just learns to live with the disability and the rest of the characters learn to deal with it.
In America we all avidly follow the body count in Iraq, but when we see someone without a limb or in a wheelchair we either stare or look away and in the end go back to our escapist world where you're either whole or gone. That's not reality at all.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Actually, it's more like "We won't make it, and we won't allow anyone else to make it, because it's ours. We don't care that it might make or lose money for someone else. It's our football, and nobody else gets to play with it."
Come on. It sucks that the show is dead, but Mr. Whedon did make a deal, and he did make a lot of money. When Josh sold Firefly to Fox he was just coming from Buffy and Angel, both very succesful (Buffy more so, of course.) I guarantee his deal was for six figures, if not seven. Universal probably got a better deal since the show wasn't so much of a hit, but it probably wasn't cheap to negotiate either. He could have held out for an option that returns the property back to him after a period of inactivity (though the major studios may or may not have gone for that.) Or better yet, he could have gone to Sci-Fi or another cable channel in the first place and got a deal that would have been more to his favor-- and put the show on in a place that would have a better chance of nurturing it, where a small but loyal fan base could carry a show. If he really felt this was a story that must be told he could have arranged for independant financing, produced the film himself and held on to all of the rights. He did not do that. He went for the major studio money and made a fair deal on their terms, knowing full well that the stakes are higher and most ideas don't make it. Yes, it's theirs and they can say what the future of Firefly/Serenity is... But the studios did invest quite a bit of money and time into productions that had a chance and failed. Why should they be expected to give back the rights? Because a relatively small fan base wants them to? Does Whedon even want them back?
Did the studios give the property a fair shake? Fox didn't, IMHO, but at least it was on the air for a while, which is more than most good ideas can say. Universal promoted it pretty heavily but it still tanked. Maybe this is just an idea that wasn't meant to find a mass audience. Anyway, Whedon's a creative guy, I'm sure he has more projects in the works.
This little blurb seems completely contrary to
http://whedonesque.com/comments/9027 and
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=22059 (look towards bottom of article).
You date a girlfriend geeky enough to appreciate Firefly. You've never heard of it.
1) You are not a geek. You do not belong here. Stop reading stuff from this website. Go to Kuroshin or Technocrat. Shoo.
2) You do not deserve your girlfriend. Smurfs need to date Smurfette, you on the other hand can easily get by on standard issue female.
Oh, why am I falling for this ruse? Your girlfriend obviously only exists in your Sybillike mind.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Here's the direct link to that wonderful statement: http://whedonesque.com/comments/9027#101124
"Her idea of wit is nothing more than an incisive observation humorously phrased and delivered with impeccable timing."
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?