January 17th, 2006

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Television
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Firefly Fans are Passing the Hat

Firefly was a short-lived show written and directed by a post-Buffy Joss Whedon. It lasted all of eight episodes, and was summarily cancelled. The feature film Serenity (I wrote about it here) featured the same cast.

Now, loyal fans of Firefly are trying to raise enough money to fund some new episodes. They’ve got a pretty daunting task (via Boing Boing):

It is estimated that it costs $1 million to create an episode of Firefly. To produce a complete season, it would require $24 million to make this happen. If 500,000 fans donate $2.00, we could produce one (1) episode. Raising the money to produce one episode will not be enough, so we need fans to donate $25 or $50 to resurrect Firefly for a complete season.

Yeah, good luck with that. Let’s see…raise $24 million to create a season of television, or, I don’t know, feed the population of Djibouti for a year. Tough call, there. I joke, of course, because the economies of the West don’t work that way. I wish these alpha-fans the best of luck.

Comments: 4 Responses so far

declan
January 17th, 2006
10:07 am

The only problem with someone collecting money from fans to resurrect a tv series is that if by some miracle they got $24 million in their paypal account do you think they will be running over to the studio or running over the border?

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Shane
January 17th, 2006
11:58 am

The project is over. They found out about some “legal issues”. So, they are returning the money to people who donated.

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Darren
January 17th, 2006
2:15 pm

Shane: Thanks for the update…that was brief.

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Shane
January 18th, 2006
8:47 pm

Here is what is posted on their site today:

I got lots of well thought out responses and flames for our fund-raising idea to re-light Firefly. It brought out a lot of bitterness in people that I simply did not expect. It also brought a lot of generosity and love I didn’t fully expect either.

We stopped taking donations today, not because of the bitterness, but because of a television producer who got a hold of me and taught me a little more about the inside of the television world. It was an authentic perspective I was not aware of.

It’s about not being an albatross around Joss’ neck. A lot of decisions in Film/TV are made on an emotional level. We were approaching this entirely from a logical level (nerds that we are). It was made clear to me that a decision maker would react badly to fan’s money being involved in the production no matter how it was presented.

So, after a night of tossing and turning, I woke up this morning and decided to close down the fund-riasing portion of our campaign before it got really big and impossible to stop. I just completed refunding everyone’s money. I closed the account so no more money would come in.

We do have several other ideas to continue our campaign and help with DVD sales and marketing those numbers to the decision makers. Our campaign has just begun, now with an even stronger front. I hope to partner with other Browncoats in the ‘verse to make this happen.

Again, thank you all for your input and support. Look for an update by early next week!

Andrew Schultz
http://www.browncoatsriseagain.com

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