Talk about power, baby. Nathan Fillion makes one semi-serious quip and almost overnight a movement is born, galvanized by the yearning of fans everywhere to once again see Serenity take to the skies. Of course I’m talking about Firefly – the much loved but short-lived series that ran on Fox in the early 2000s and was then cancelled in its prime. And I’m also referring to Fillion’s remark in an EW interview last week that “If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to Firefly, make it on my own, and distribute it on the Internet.”
Unlike other beloved series which never get a last gasp Firefly had enough fans to convince powers that be to create a movie which gave more of a finality to the series and the fans less heartbreak. Still, there’s something about this little show that just gets under your skin. Personally, in our home, renting the DVDs was a hard sell at first for my husband, who knows I am not particularly fond of cowboy tales or space shows (some parts of the Star Trek franchise notwithstanding). I will finally admit here that I routinely and consistently refer to Battle Star Galactica as “Schmactica” and watched the whole series peripherally while playing Plants vs. Zombies thus I didn’t even notice that the whole entire series was over. ”Do we have any episodes left?” I’d ask my husband. ”No, they (plot point I can’t divulge because it would be a spoiler), remember?” he’d say and I’d shrug. ”Oh, yeah.” I still don’t know what all the fuss was about. But that’s another topic entirely.
So anything about space cowboys was bound to be a double whammy of YAWN. Or so I thought. Yet somehow something – maybe Fillion’s special brand of zing, maybe creator Joss Whedon’s special brand of zip, maybe Morena Baccarin’s special brand of pow – SOMETHING stole my heart in episode one and I was hooked right along with all the other fans. Another small aside: one of those fans includes Julie Powell (the “Julie” of Julie & Julia). I found this out when I attended a reading of her following book, Cleaving, and she showed up wearing a BrownCoats tee shirt.
So, the actual story that precedes this “Nathan might be buying Firefly” story is that the Science Channel has acquired the rights to the show and will be airing it in its entirety beginning on March 6 at 8 p.m., with the two hour pilot, followed by the first episode at 10 p.m.
After that you can catch Firefly every Sunday night till it’s over. In the meantime, check out some of the great grass-roots efforts that have been springing up; if you really believe in this show join the Facebook page (like I have) and see exactly what’s been buzzing. Now listen – I don’t want you to think that I believe for a minute that Nathan Fillion has the resources (even if he got 300 million dollars) to actually do this. But what this does show is that fan support for Firefly is still very strong – and when decision makers see that there’s a potential market for a product . . . well . . . it’s a lot easier to create the product. So – don’t really think of this as helping Nathan, think of this as casting a vote. After all, this is America.
Help Nathan Buy Firefly – Website Page and Facebook Page.
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