Universal Pictures has green-lighted Serenity, a feature film to be based on the short-lived Joss Whedon television series Firefly, according to Variety. Fox TV canceled Firefly in late 2002, after airing just 11 episodes of the futuristic western. The trade paper reported that Whedon is on board to write and direct the feature, and that the entire original cast of the series, among them Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres and Summer Glau, would reprise their characters.
Whedon told Variety that he chose to title the film Serenity in order to provide some distance from the TV version, and he added that the film's action would take place about six months after the last events seen on the show. "It was important that people understand that the movie isn't the series," Whedon said. "The movie is bigger, more epic than anything you can do in a series."
The idea, Whedon went on to tell Variety, was to make Serenity accessible even to moviegoers who never saw an episode of Firefly. "You're not going to bring people into a movie if you're explaining all the time what happened before," Whedon said. Production is slated to begin in June and the studio hopes to have Serenity ready for release in 2005. Universal is owned by Vivendi Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Courtesy of SciFi Wire |
