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Topic: Firefly (Read 330 times)

Rhune
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Firefly
« on: Nov 3^rd, 2002, 10:19am »

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I wanted to add that I've seen 3 episodes so far and have been enjoying it. I agree that the last episode, Out of Gas was their best to date.
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FOX's 'Firefly' Keeps the Lights On
Fri, Nov 1, 2002 05:40 PM PDT
by Kate O'Hare
Zap2it

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - To quote a would-be plague victim in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" : "I'm not dead yet."

Despite a rocky development process, a last-minute pickup by FOX, a tough time slot, preemptions by baseball and sagging ratings, Joss Whedon's science-fiction/Western drama "Firefly" is still alive and kicking on Friday nights at 8 p.m. ET.

Some reviewers rated the Oct. 25 episode, "Out of Gas," as the best yet. Written by executive producer Tim Minear (who shares that title with creator Whedon), it used flashbacks to give viewers hints as to how the crew of the Firefly-class spaceship Serenity came together in a post-civil-war solar system 500 years in the future, under the command of losing-side-combatant Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion).

Of course, all this was also laid out in the series' two-hour pilot, but, as Whedon says, "There's a lot of confusion, because they didn't air the pilot, which explains everything. We tried to do that as best we could in an hour show."

Reportedly not met with unreserved joy by 20th Century Fox Television studio head Sandy Grushow, the pilot is scheduled to finally air on Dec. 20, begging the question of whether "Firefly" is likely to stay on the air until then.

"Looks like," says Whedon. "We're hoping that we'll get some slow growth, which is what Sandy Grushow said before this season ever started. He said, 'Look, you're going to be hit with baseball. It's not an out-of-the-box thing, we don't expect it to be.' So there's something good on that side. They're letting us keep going, and it really feels like we're ready to hit our stride."

"The shows that we're working on now have the adventure and the excitement that FOX is looking for, along with all the character stuff, which is why I show up."

"I think we've found it," says Minear. "I do, I do."

FOX has ordered three more scripts, over and above the original 13-episode order. "That makes 16," says Minear. "I think I can count. This is the land bridge that connects the two continents. The notion being, they haven't made a decision. If they decide to pick us up, the scripts will already be in development, in the stages of being written, and we won't have to stop production."

One major difference between "Firefly" and Whedon's previous shows -- UPN's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and its spin-off, The WB's "Angel" -- is that there is no obvious mission for the characters of "Firefly." They're not charged with saving the universe from anything, and seem to have no mystical destiny to fulfill.

"I wanted to get away from this sort of overweening Chosen One," Whedon says. "There's a messianic steam in popular culture right now, with 'Buffy' and 'The Matrix.' One chosen person -- it's been cropping up a lot. I want to get away from that."

"I want to show people -- although they have River there [a disturbed " genius" girl, played by Summer Glau], who's extraordinary, and they're big damn heroes, all that good noise -- I want to show people that really aren't chosen, who would not make the list, who are not the saviors of the world."

"Frankly," Minear says, "Mal's mission is to keep these people alive and keep flying. It's just about getting by. That's always been the mission statement of what the show is -- getting by."

Asked if he thinks that's enough for appointment television, Minear says, "I do. It depends on who the people are. It depends on if an audience resonates with the stories that are told week to week, and if the cast is engaging."

One cast member seems to have broken through already -- the mercenary Jayne, played by Adam Baldwin. Blunt and lumbering, his deadpan humor and bullheadedness have struck a chord with fans. "I was a little surprised that Jayne was as popular as he was," Whedon says. "He's kind of like Cordelia [on 'Buffy' and 'Angel']. He's the guy who says the thing that other people are afraid to say. That usually means that it's the funniest thing in the room."

Minear says that "Firefly" is not planning any particular story arcs for the November ratings-sweeps period. "Actually, we're trying to make every episode big," he explains. "Something big for the series does happen, pretty much in every episode, but it's not a three-episode arc like we would do on 'Angel' yet. We're not to that point."

"We're trying to make sure that it's user-friendly for as long as we can make it, so we can hopefully build an audience and stay on the air."

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Rhune
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Re: Firefly
« Reply #1 on: Nov 14^th, 2002, 9:06am »

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Making the Web Work for 'Firefly'
Wed, Nov 13, 2002 04:17 PM PDT
by Kate O'Hare
Zap2it

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Staffers at Mutant Enemy, the production company behind FOX's "Firefly," are hoping to hear early next week about whether or not the sci-fi drama gets its "back nine" order of episodes, meaning it will complete its first, 22-episode season.

A lot depends on the airing of this Friday's episode, "Ariel," which just may feature a cameo appearance by Kelly Wheeler, the producer's assistant behind the weblog that is part of the show's official site, at www.fox.com/firefly.

Whether or not the show gets picked up for the rest of the season, Mutant Enemy president Chris Buchanan is still pretty darn proud of the site. Along with the official site for FOX's "John Doe" at www.fox.com/johndoe (that show got its pickup, by the way), it's an attempt to do on an official site what fans have long done on their own sites.

This has been done before, most successfully by Lucasfilm's official site for the "Star Wars" films, at www.starwars.com. Loaded with video, behind-the-scenes info, downloadable extras and up-to-the-minute news (often functioning as Lucasfilm's way of releasing news), the site has proven a valuable resource for fans and the press.

"That gave me real inspiration," Buchanan says. "I was running an Internet company when that site was done, and I was like, 'That's really cool.' I said, 'Look, we're making this really cool show, with so much work going into it from a design perspective, and certainly from the creative, with the casting and all that.'"

"Some people don't want to know what's going on behind the scenes. They want to know what's going on with the characters. But it's great that, from the get-go, we had production artwork up, really early, before we had even started rendering some of the special effects. We had bits and pieces of the animatronics animation stuff."

Up and running before the show premiered, the "Firefly" site features video clips of production and interviews with cast members and producers Joss Whedon and Tim Minear.

"[The early site] had a lot of the standard stuff," Buchanan says, "the background and the characters and the actors. But we said, 'OK, we're going to put up some Web-friendly media, like script pages. We're going to put up some interviews, not formal interviews, but off-the-cuff interviews with Joss and Tim."

"The real notion -- and we had this meeting very early on -- we want to be the source, the official site, for as much information for the fandom as possible."

Offering up a lot of that information is Wheeler, an assistant to Gareth Davies, one of the "Firefly" producers. From her vantage point in the production offices and on the set every day, she offers fans a running commentary on what's going on (even letting star Nathan Fillion step in for one day, when he revealed the news of Wheeler's screen debut).

Of course, all this openness (which doesn't, by the way, extend to revealing important plot points early, as some fan-run "spoiler" sites do) is a scary thing to the studio and the network.

"When you're dealing with programming executives and these creative execs," Buchanan says, "they're very nervous to give out stuff a month before the episode airs, or to share something that went wrong, that something's being reshot, heaven forbid, which we talk about in the weblog. 'God, this happened ... Sean Maher has the flu, Nathan's got poison ivy.'"

As does the "John Doe" site, the "Firefly" site has something called "Script to Screen," in which a scene is traced from its first inception to its final filmed form.

"It was a month-long process," Buchanan says. "The people that are into that level of detail love it. You can sit there and listen to the director talk about this and Tim Minear point out that, and the special-effects person commenting on how they're going to do it. If you want to be that close, you can be there."

Probably the most fascinating and terrifying aspects of the sites for the producers are the message boards, in which fans sound off about the shows. "I think [our board] went up in August," Buchanan says. "We've had almost 19,000 messages, posted, which, if you look at all the other shows on FOX, is pretty amazing, considering we were the 89th show in the country this week."

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Rhune
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Re: Firefly
« Reply #2 on: Nov 19^th, 2002, 10:18am »

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'Firefly' Takes Two
Mon, Nov 18, 2002 02:32 PM PDT
by Kate O'Hare
Zap2it

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - A source close to Mutant Enemy, the production company for FOX's struggling Friday-night science-fiction drama "Firefly," reports that the network has ordered two more episodes produced, keeping the series before the cameras through December.

The new episodes come from six scripts previously ordered, over and above the original order of 13 episodes.

Series creator Joss Whedon is currently at work directing an episode of "Firefly," a 20th Century Fox Television production that follows the crew of a spaceship trying to make ends meet in a post-civil-war world 500 years in the future. The show's original, two-hour pilot - seen only in abbreviated form by TV critics and not at all by the public - will likely air Dec. 20.

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Rhune
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Re: Firefly
« Reply #3 on: Dec 15^th, 2002, 8:05pm »

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'Firefly' Fades to Black
Fri, Dec 13, 2002 02:22 PM PDT

by Kate O'Hare
Zap2it, TV News

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Despite intense promotional efforts by series creator Joss Whedon and the work of a cadre of devoted fans (which included buying an ad in Variety), FOX has decided to pull the plug on its struggling Friday-night science-fiction series "Firefly."

The network had announced that the show was going on hiatus on Nov. 26.

"Serenity," writer/director Whedon's two-hour pilot for the show -- the mixed reception for which by studio and network last spring appears to have been only the start of "Firefly's" problems -- airs on Friday, Dec. 20, at 8 p.m. ET, and that may be the series finale as well.

"Firefly" continues in production on its 14th episode through next week, completing the full order of 15 hours, but it is uncertain whether the three remaining unaired episodes will be seen on FOX.

But, according to a 20th Century Fox spokesman, the three episodes will be put through post-production and completed. The spokesman also says that it's likely Whedon and his team at Mutant Enemy Productions will engage in talks to see if "Firefly" can find a new home.

At this point, Whedon continues to have "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" airing on UPN, with its spin-off, "Angel," airing on The WB.

In the new year, the 8 p.m. ET Friday timeslot currently inhabited by "Firefly" will be filled by "Fastlane." That action/drama had been struggling on Wednesday nights but nevertheless got a full-season order, as did the mystery/drama "John Doe," which continues at 9 p.m. ET Fridays.

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Rhune
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Re: Firefly
« Reply #4 on: Dec 16^th, 2002, 4:18pm »

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Firefly May End at the Beginning
Sun, Dec 15, 2002 05:10 PM PDT
by Kate O'Hare
Zap2it

As of last week, FOX apparently pulled the plug on its Friday-night science-fiction drama "Firefly, about the crew of the Firefly-class starship Serenity, which hauls cargo and passengers to make ends meet in an existence 500 years after a planetary civil war.

On Dec. 20 at 8 p.m. ET, fans finally get to see " Serenity," the series' two-hour pilot, which previously has only been seen in edited form by TV critics and not at all by the public. Opening with a bloody sequence depicting the battle of Serenity Valley, after which the ship was named, it shows how losing-side soldier Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) picked up the pieces after the war and assembled his crew.

Joining Mal are Zoe (Gina Torres), who served under Malcolm in the war; her husband, ship's pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk); mechanic Kaylee (Jewel Staite); Inara (Morena Baccarin), a licensed prostitute, or " Companion," who uses the ship as a home base; preacher Book (Ron Glass); mercenary Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin); and doctor Simon Tam (Sean Maher) and his emotionally damaged sister, River (Summer Glau), who are on the run from nefarious agents -- aka " The Blue-Hand Men") -- of the planet-spanning Alliance government.

The network says the show is on hiatus, but sources close to the production reveal that the network does not plan to order any new episodes, which effectively seals the fate of Firefly on FOX.

After Serenity, there are still three unaired episodes, the last of which, directed by executive producer Tim Minear (who shares that title with series creator Joss Whedon), finishes filming this week. Its not known whether these will ever air on FOX.

They have said theyre going to (air them), says Minear, speaking from the set on Friday, Dec. 13, the day the news of the production halt became public. I am here directing, and were finishing this. Were going to finish posting everything, so they want us to finish what they paid for.

FOX did order six scripts beyond the initial order of 13 hours, and then asked for two of those scripts to be produced. Asked why he thinks the end finally came anyway, Minear says, What was the final nail in the coffin? Why did they pull the plug? Probably because not enough people were watching. It seemed to me, not enough people knew the show was on. There was a very low awareness of the show.

From what I gathered from the fan response -- and as you know, Im pretty well connected to the Internet response -- the love for the show among what we would consider our core audience was large and was getting larger.

So theres some frustration that we feel like the show really wasnt allowed to be found. There were a lot of scheduling issues and inconsistency in airing, and some lack of promotion, I would say. Its a business, and if something doesnt come out of the gate strong, its an uphill battle from there.

This doesnt mean, though, that Whedon and Minear are throwing in the towel. Whedon currently has two shows on the air -- UPNs Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The WBs Angel -- and apparently has hopes of finding a new home for Firefly.

We havent given up, Minear says. Thats going to be a thing thats going to be pursued, and I believe, with vigor. This only just happened. Joss has his relationships, and Im sure hell look to those relationships. I dont think hes even remotely close to throwing in the towel or giving up the ghost on this.

Also, since the final three episodes are going to be put through post-production and finished, there is the question of a possible future DVD release. Yes, Minear says. We are bound and determined to get whatever gets made onto DVD.

Asked about the mood on the set, Minear says, The mood is pretty good. Its still a whole bunch of people that love working together. We get to work together today and next week, and thats good. Its an extraordinary group of people, both the cast and the crew. Ive had more than one person tell me this is the most fun theyve had working on something.

Ive never seen a cast cohere like this. Its extraordinary -- nine actors who are all incredibly nice people and incredibly talented. Ive said it before, and Ill continue to say it.

The love apparently goes both ways. In an interview conducted before the hiatus announcement, Baldwin says, " Most of it starts with Joss and Tim [Minear], and Ben [Edlund] and Jose [Molina]. It's such a great group of writers that gives us great words to say. People say, 'Oh, you're doing such a great job.' I say, 'Have you read the script?' It makes it easier for us."

Incidentally, " Firefly" doesn't mark the first time Baldwin has worked in science fiction or on FOX. He had a recurring role as genetically engineered super-soldier Knowle Rohrer in " The X-Files."

" I just always think that I'm so big and ugly that it's easy to put me in this thug role," Baldwin says. " I'm just glad that Jayne has all these different levels I can play at, being a big meanie and also a big baby. He's the lovable thug. I just try to play him like a big, old, petulant 7-year-old."

Asked about Baldwins assertion that he's big and ugly, Minear laughs. Yeah, sure. He's the sexy newcomer.

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