LA Times Article about Serenity (from today) by Caite

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LA Times Article about Serenity (from today)

POSTED BY: CAITE
UPDATED: Monday, September 12, 2005 08:11
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Sunday, September 11, 2005 3:46 PM

FALL SNEAKS
Taking his craft back to space
Out-of-this-world fan support for a futuristic TV show helps Joss Whedon resurrect it as a movie.
By Maria Elena Fernandez, Times Staff Writer

It's fitting, and sweetly vengeful, that a television show born of a writer's zeal for frontier life is now itself conquering new borders.

"Serenity," the new incarnation of the futuristic space western "Firefly," which briefly aired in 2002 on Fox, will premiere as a Universal Pictures feature on Sept. 30 — with the TV cast intact. So how has director-writer Joss Whedon been able to take his failed television series from the small screen to the big?
That's simple, says Whedon, also the creator of the cult hits "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel."

"Probably more than any project that I can think of, the fans made their voices heard," Whedon said. "For a major motion picture, that's a little bit unprecedented. I give them giant props because they have earned them."

After Fox yanked the show off its schedule, the loyal fans launched websites and bought more than a million copies of the DVD (which featured extra episodes). It was enough to convince Universal in 2004 that the story of the ragtag crew of the starship Serenity was worth telling.

"I always thought the show would catch on slowly, and it's done exactly that," Whedon said.

The crew of mercenaries and misfits aboard Serenity is led by Capt. Mal (Nathan Fillion), who has ended up on the wrong side of a galactic civil war against ominous forces, known as the Alliance.

Whedon's challenge was to take his episodic tale of people living aboard a transport ship 500 years in the future and flesh it out into a two-hour film that would satisfy the devoted as well as audiences who never saw his TV series.

"Luckily, I did have an overreaching arc, a grand conspiratorial story of adventure that they were going to get caught up in," Whedon said. "The basis of the movie was 'Let's take the most mundane people in the universe and let's stick them in a truly epic situation and see how they react.' "

Whedon conceived the pilot for "Firefly" after he finished reading "The Killer Angels," an account of the Battle of Gettysburg, one night in London when he was jet-lagged.

"Reading that kind of book just flipped the switch and made me realize that I have a deep love for this particular frontier story," he said. "When you're dealing with science fiction, if it has any kind of history in it, everything is interesting and everything is useful. Frontier stories are always so unique and secluded and harsh and interesting and I just thought that's what it must be like to be aboard a spaceship, when you're trying to make a living and you're living hand to mouth flying between planets."

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Sunday, September 11, 2005 6:17 PM

CAITE

::bumpy::

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Sunday, September 11, 2005 7:50 PM

BARCLAY

Quote:
...bought more than a million copies of the DVD...

This is, as far as I know, the first update of any DVD sales figures since the 200,000 range.

More than a million copies.

Let that sink in folks.

How many more than a million is the next question. But I figure, seeing as how she obviously interview Joss, this is a reliable figure to go on.

Also means our fan base might be a bit larger than we think. Sure, we've got 50,000 registered users on the Versal Site, but that's peanuts if this one million figure shows up.

I might have to bump up my Serenity opening weekend estimates. If this is the size of the fanbase (and I know plenty of people going to the movie who don't own a DVD set, 10 personally), this movie could be a huge draw. Huge.

I'm seriously thinking if we draw the unitiated scifi audience, and we are this mighty...

Let's be honest. Browncoats have far succeeded every expectation ever held of them. Why not the movie opening, too?

"You are on the Global Frequency."
http://www.frequencysite.com
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com

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Sunday, September 11, 2005 8:09 PM

LINDLEY

The "more than a million" thing showed up once before, but was quickly withdrawn.

I'm not saying it's wrong, just don't count on it without confirmation. Could be they're taking the 200,000 number and projecting it over time.

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Monday, September 12, 2005 8:11 AM

BROWNCOAT1

May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.

Shiny article! It should convince some more people to give Serenity as shot opening weekend.

I wish we could get some kind of official word on where the DVD sales figure stands. I truly hope it is a million, but we have never really heard anything from any of the powers that be.

__________________________________________

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

Richmond, VA & surrounding area Firefly Fans:

http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/richmondbrowncoats/

http://www.richmondbrowncoats.org

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