Possible Firefly movie....

I just saw this:

Joss Whedon To Write Firefly Feature Film
Source: Sci Fi Wire
Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Joss Whedon, creator of Fox's canceled SF western series Firefly, told Sci Fi Wire that he is close to a deal to write and direct a feature film based on the short-lived show.

"What's happening with that is that I'm writing a script," Whedon said in an interview. "And I have some interest. But I won't know really until I finish a draft whether or not it's genuine. ... We have a pretty decent shot. It's not a crazed pipe dream."

Whedon said that any deal for a Firefly movie would be contingent on getting the original cast back as the crew of the space transport ship Serenity.

Is it going to be on the DVD with the rest of the episodes?

Ok, I can dream, can't I?

It would be funny if the movie was a hit and the series started back up, wouldn't it?

Glenn

The series comes out December 5th, so no it'd be a seperate item.

They're hoping the series will be more successful as a movie franchise, and since half the cast already have new shows and development deals, it's done as a series

How does one like Josh Whedon get another chance to do a tv series, let alone a movie based on the short-lived series? Wasn't Firefly a rather mixed bag? Is there any word on whether or not this will be direct to TV or not?

The one episode I managed to see reminded me of Cowboy Bebop...the one where a bounty hunter intercepts the ship and gets on board.

I don't think it was a mixed bag at all unless you mean it ranged from very good to freaking fantastic.

I am with Rudolph. It is also very interesting to see Whedon writing a movie script again instead of just touching them up.

Right now, he's just writing a script, which doesn't mean much commitment from the studio. As to how he gets another chance, sure, Firefly didn't connect with a large enough audience, but Angel is in its fifth year and Buffy ran seven, and made Fox some good money both in terms of sales and ancillary merchandise. He's certainly worth giving whatever they're paying him for the Firefly feature screenplay, if it keeps him at the studio.

Of course, it could still wind up sitting in a box somewhere in Fox's vaults next to that musical animated Dracula script he was writing for Don Bluth.

It's JOSS!!! not Josh. Somewhere Jeff's head is exploding.

I can't believe I never connected those dots, Max. The show was very, very much like Cowboy Bebop. No wonder I loved it.

(I'm with Rudolph also.)

Bebop got a movie.

which bombed in Japan and killed future movies (unless they're commissioned by US companies). No comparisons to Bebop if you want Firefly to live

I wouldn't think a Firefly movie would be horribly expensive. IIRC, they still have the Serenity. It was disassembled, but not scrapped. So that takes care of their main location. THey might be able to pull it off for $30-$40 million.

But unlike Firefly, we got 26 episodes...

Jason

Another voice in the choir for this! Yep, first solo credit since movie-Buffy if you don't count animation and that shit-fest Alien: Ressurection. Not to mention that Firefly's ratings, while poor for Fox standards were downright decent for the WB and were acceptable for a Friday night. If it had been given a week night or the old X-Files spot, who knows where it would be right now. Exactly. Each episode only cost around $2 or $3 million, a lot by TV standards but penny change in the movie world. Now movies are by their very nature more expensive, but even so it shouldn't cost too much more that $30 million. Specially since none of the stars have made it really big yet, unless you count Gina Torres' bit role in Reloaded.

Gina's role in "Reloaded" had more to do with her being Mrs. Laurence Fishburne than anything else.

If they were acceptable for a Friday night, Firefly would still be in production. And even if its ratings were good enough for WB, that doesn't mean that Firefly would have achieved those ratings on that network - not only does it have somewhat lower household penetration, but there's a good chance WB would have paid less per episode, which would have cut into the production values...

And putting Firefly on another night, or Sunday at 9pm (where it wouldn't have gone, because Angel was there and Mutant Enemy supposedly has no-compete clauses) might just have exposed it to harsher competition as opposed to being the only action hour/show targeted to its age group on at the time.

I loved Firefly, but let's not be under the illusion that it was anything but an expensive gamble.

Jason, Fox apparently has odd ideas about what acceptable ratings for a Friday are. No show has lasted more than one season there since Millenium ended in 1999.

Firefly was simply too expensive for a low-traffic night like Friday.

I didn't say acceptable by Fox's standards. But Firefly's ratings were[EDIT: should be weren't] much below average for the night. It couldn't have been made at the WB, I have no illusions about that. My point was that it matched the ratings standard of his previous shows, not that it should have launched there. The production values would have definitely suffered on WB (Galactica redux?). That said, considering that the WB attracts more of a niche market than other channels, I wouldn't be surprised if the ratings held up darn near as well. Still, Friday's a death zone any way you slice it. Yes, but considering that Angel is just clinging to life as it is it may have been smarter for them to switch Angel's night as opposed to Firefly's. And while Sunday at 9 is tougher competition, it's because there's a much larger audience to divide up. Law and Order wouldn't have had much cross-over, so the only real threat to viewship would have been Alias. Would it have still failed on Sundays? Maybe. But it would have had a fighting chance there, atleast.

Of course, when a show gets moved around, there's all sorts of complaints that the network wouldn't let it stay in one place and let it build an audience.

When a network cancels a show one loves, there's always something that could have been done better/different that could have saved it.

Angel should definately have NOT stayed across from Alias, it's a split audience. It's no coincidence that the ratings went up when the show moved to Wednesday (that and the fact that it got even better )

If Whedon pulled this off, I'd be there opening night. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly was probably both too strange a concept and just too plain good to ever be a mainstream hit, but it also probably would have done better on a different night. Pretty much every show Fox has put on Friday nights the last couple years has got canceled. It's worth noting that many episodes were shown out of order and not in their intended widescreen format as well as the fact that it was technically Whedon's highest rated show this season. That said, I have no illusions that this show would have been a big success if treated better by its network. I just hope that people get to discover it now that its on dvd and that that will hopefully give support to the idea of a feature film.

John, pretty much? Millennium, which ended in 1999, is the last show to go more than one season on Fox Friday.

My question is how do you make a movie out of an unsucessful TV show and have enough people see it to be successful???

It might be time to file it under "Wishful thinking".

Let's ask those guys that made those Star Trek movies. And then those other guys who made those Naked Gun movies.

Star Trek had the advantage of having 3 seasons on TV to build an audience. The Naked Gun films had the advantage of Zucker/Abrams/Zucker, who had a rep for movies.

I'm not saying it won't work, but the odds are long. I still don't see a "Babylon 5" movie, and that ran for five seasons.

Jason

Yeah, but JMS's career is pretty much limited to television. Whedon started out life as a screenwriter, with some of the great hits of the '90s under his belt. It would stand to reason that he'd have more connections.
And I doubt Whedon would waste his time hammering out a screenplay unless he had someone interested in financing it. Doesn't mean it will happen, mind you, but it does mean that the possibility is strong.

Babylon 5 also ended its story

I don't know as you'd call Alien Resurrection and the Buffy movie hits, he wasn't credited on Speed, and his name never seems to come up when people talk about Toy Story.

And yet, JMS kept shoveling disappointments like the TV-movies and "Crusade" out afterward...

While I'll admit some of his later work hasn't exactly set the box office on fire, just being involved with those projects (by which I mean Speed and Toy Story) has to give you some sort of bargaining power, I'd think. Regardless, we'll see eventually.