I can’t for the life of me figure out why Firefly wasn’t picked up by another network/cable channel when Fox canceled it. I appears to have a fanatical fan base from both the Sci-Fi and Whedon-fan communities. Were the offers just not good, or did Whedon feel that he would give up too much control, or what?
Probably too expensive.
Well, I can’t say for certain, but I always got the notion that the original fan base, though certainly fanatical, was not really large enough in numbers to support producing the show. However, partly because it really was good and partly because of the definite rumors of Joss converting the notion into a movie, the fan base actually kept growing after the show was cancelled… probably at first through ‘firefly parties’ and underground trading in tapes, computer video files and bootleg discs, and then with the official DVD release that became quite a hit. Joss’ usual cross-casting helped with this too, casting Gina and later Adam on Angel, Nathan on Buffy, and completing at least one of the fabled ‘hat tricks’ after Firefly had shut down. Word of mouth kept spreading, and the ‘Firefly’ fan base is probably about eight times larger now than when she final episode was broadcast on fox. (at a very rough guess.) I’m not sure if it was the hardcore Joss fans who preached the gospel to sci fi people, or if sci fi people were the core fan base at the start who led Jossians out into the 'verse 
And yes, I’m both a Jossian and a sci fi fan, and one of those people who got to the party quite late. 
In the fall of 2002 I was thrilled with Angel and Buffy, but just enough ‘saturated’ with Joss-y goodness that I didn’t feel any impulse to check out the new offering, and was bound and determined to do something else with my friday nights… couldn’t tell you what. In retrospect, I might have been happier watching firefly and leaving the seventh season of buffy to catch on DVD, but that’s the way it goes.
I am oddly glad, though, that I left SOMETHING unwittingly for myself as a treasure trove of unwatched jossness until there was a critical shortage of it around.
Plus, once one network drops a show, it’s tainted goods. “If this series was really any good, the network wouldn’t have dropped it.”
What chrisk said. I know a number of other Firefly fans, but none of them watched the show back when it was on Fox.
True. I hadn’t even heard of the series until a friend handed me the DVD boxed set and told me to check it out. It had me from the point that Mal played the practical joke on the doctor.Who knows, if Serenity does well enough at the box office, some television executive might get it in his head to start a spin-off series.
Not gonna happen. Fox owns the rights for the next ten years, and they seem to have taken Joss’ makinga show that wasn’t a carbon copy of Buffy, or anything else, and then not letting it die when they said it was dead quite personally. Maybe if it does really, really well someone will pry the rights away with a dumptruck full of money, but i doubt it.
I think more films, direct to DVD if not theatrical, is a much more likely circumstance.
I have nothing concrete to back this up, but I am under the impression that at the time Whedon was shopping Firefly to the Sci-fi channel, Sci-f had alredy made a deal with another producer to make the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. BS, while obviously not in exactly the same quadrant with the other show, was clearly intended to be rolled over to a regular series if the miniseries ratings were high enough, and as planned it was similar enough in style that the two series probably would not have been compatible on the same network. With one set in the distant past, one in the future, but with the same gritty tone, emphasis on character and even the same effects contractor (Zoic), running both as series at once could have beeen seen by the suits as way too confusing for the audience.
Heh, they should have just merged the two together and be done with it. Edward James Olmos as the morally conflicted but dedicated commander of an Alliance cruiser, chasing Mal and his band of cutthroats all over the 'verse, while Number Six leads the Blue Hand dudes in the search for River, who they were experimenting on in an effort to create a newer, better Cylon. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Let’s try the first line again, shall we?
Sorry, I’m a bit tired.
Does anybody know what happened to the Firefly movie that was supposed to be released in, oh, March of this year but never materialized? I saw the trailer for it (as well as the entire cast) at Comic Con last summer and have been waiting ever since… 
Then again, some shows do migrate networks. “Family Matters” made the jump from ABC to CBS for its final season.
I firmly believe that SciFi would have picked up “Firefly” if not for them already being commited to “Tremors: The Series”.
Boy, that is NOT a good title or title page for a sci-fi movie. People are gonna think it’s a martial arts deal.
Then I watched the “trailer,” and it was even worse. Are they trying to drive away everyone except die-hard fans of the TV show? How on earth are they going to get anyone to go see this?
Heh. I actually know someone who was converted by the trailer. So it’s not completely useless.
I’ve pointed a few fence-sitters (people who watched some of the TV show and went, “eh.”) towards the trailer and they went, “Wow!”
In fact, my nephew, whom I had tried to convert to a Browncoat last year, saw the trailer and asked to borrow my DVD boxed set (that I couldn’t get him to watch last year). Now he’s a rabid Browncoat, and is actually quite upset that the movie isn’t coming out 'til September.
Hmm… I just opened up serenitymovie.com, and the “trailer” linked to there doesn’t actually seem to be the movie trailer we’re all talking about about, but rather a “Firefly” junket with Joss Whedon. Here’s a link to the actual trailer, RickJay: