Firefly

This is an excerpt from the new Joss Whedon interview in the October edition of the UK genre magazine SFX (conducted before the announcement of the movie in the Hollywood Reporter last week).

Quote:

How disappointed were you when Firefly got cancelled?

"As disappointed as a human being can be. I poured my heart and soul into that show. I believed in it with every fibre of my being. I think it found itself as a show faster than anything I’ve ever done. I mean, that ensemble is as good as anybody I’ve ever worked with. I think I had dozens and dozens - if not hundreds - of stories I wanted to tell with those people.

"The moment we were cancelled I set about trying to find a new home for it, which I am still doing. At the moment I’m writing a screenplay about those characters, that I have some hope of getting made. And should that happen, then some of that pain will be alleviated".

Do you see it as a way of relaunching the series?

"No, I would think of it as a movie. You have to get into a different mode. If you’re seriously trying to get someone to invest in a film you can’t just say it’ll be a springboard for a series. That’s not enough. So it has to be completely self-contained. It has to exist without the series - the one that came before, or anything that might come afterwards."

Do the cast from the TV show come as part of the package?

"Oh yeah. The cast comes with the script".

With you as director?

"Yes I am signed on as director if it should go."

Where would you have liked to have taken the series? Without giving away what’s in the film...

"Part of what the film is about has to do with River, and that whole mystery, and that was going to be revealed over the course of the series. Um, but the places I wanted to take them were the dark, quiet places, where you have to make the really, really, hard decisions. Where you have to decide how many people you can save. If you can save anybody, how much of yourself you can give away. Every day’s a negotiation and sometimes it’s done with guns".

"And that’s what makes frontier life so fascinating. That’s what makes the show so interesting to me. Nothing is set. There’s no holodecks. There’s nothing safe about where they are, except they have each other."

Would you stand by your decision to have no sound effects in space in the movie version?

"Well the plan is silence. But, you know, if it becomes a big problem, and they say, ’By God...’ I’d say ’Okay’! You choose your battles. And if I get to put this cast up in on screen the way they deserve to be, then there are other things I can let go of".