A proposal for the continuation of Serenity
POSTED BY: ShinyHat
UPDATED: Monday, April 17, 2006 23:01
VIEWED: 949
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Firefly as a television show on Fox was abused by the network and never was given the chance to take off. The quality of the show spoke for itself and justified the production of a franchise-based motion picture to Universal. Even though the quality of the show was great, the film performed on an average level at the box office for a couple reasons. First, the entire cast was relatively new to movie audiences. The television show’s original fanbase showed up in droves, but movie audiences had only seen actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor, Adam Baldwin, Gina Torres, Ron Glass and Alan Tudyk in smaller supporting roles in other films. Universal’s marketing strategy had many difficult hurdles to overcome. The property was challenging to sell because of its peculiar nature having first existed as a television show most people never heard of with the movie being a continuation of it. Getting people to purchase the DVDs of the television show provided little direct benefit to Universal, plus finding and viewing a relatively obscure DVD is a substantial barrier of entry for most people who just want to see a movie on some Friday night. So Universal put their energy into getting people to see the movie as something science fiction based from the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer which wasn’t a bad idea. The movie itself had a plot that was difficult to sum up in part because of the characters and their prior history and also because it was trying to stuff a whole lot of character development into a very small space. Despite these challenges, the movie was by no means a bust: critics loved it, the fans loved it and the uninitiated who gave it a chance did, too. Many of those who first saw Serenity at the movie theater or on DVD have gone back to get Firefly once they knew it existed. Interest in the property is at an all time high. The quality of the content has never been in question.
So very quickly here’s what I’m proposing: Make this thing into a real space soap opera and bring back the movie serial. Produce Serenity in the same way you would a television show, but for the big screen. Every three weeks a new hour-long episode would be released to the movie theaters. Each time a new episode becomes available in theaters, the previous episode becomes available as an iTunes download and as a pay-per-view movie. You want to create as many exposure points for the content as possible. Allow consumers to get easy paid access to the content and most will take it. Make a season last 12 or so episodes with a double-length finale and then take 3 months off. Box up the whole thing as both DVD and HD-DVD and sell it during the hiatus.
Advantages:
Ownership: Universal does not necessarily need to purchase Fox’s television rights, as they would be making Firefly-based movies which they already have a deal for.
Quality content. When there are characters people can relate to over time, they keep coming back. Firefly as a show worked very well on that level but when aired on television was never given time to develop it with a wider audience. Serenity had to reintroduce all those characters, get uninitiated audiences to care about them, then put them in a story and show how they made out all in two hours. Episodic content gives more time in which to develop characters and plotlines and could work very well on a movie screen.
Consumer-friendly: Consumers always have a choice of paying to see the content. They don’t have to BitTorrent the show if they miss an episode at the theater, and by making it available in iTunes, owners of video-capable iPods are virtually walking advertisements for the show. Making the show available in this way adds more exposure points and reduces to zero the amount of time consumers want to see and pay for content but can’t. Win-Win for everybody :)
Constant exposure: the show is ALWAYS playing at the theater for 36 weeks a year! Casual movie goers will notice that something called Serenity is playing every time they go to the theater possibly to see something else. They cou
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What in Hades are the studios and networks now but glorified investment banking operations anyway? With such a dedicated and growing fanbase, does an idea like Firefly really need them at this point?
If we're playing with paradigm shifts, why not skip theatre or network TV distribution completely (Down with the MegaMultiPlex Alliance and Blue Screen Corporation!), film the next generation of Firefly episodes entirely in digital, and do the season as a prepaid global subscriber-service webcast in whatever format works best? The budget for each season depends upon the number of prepaid subscribers signed up. Release to DVD at the end of each season, with subscribers getting a discount and pre-ordering options. Include goodies on the DVD set that aren't included in the original webcast to provide added value to the core market base.
Even better, set the whole thing up like an agricultural cooperative, a user-based corporate entity where each subscriber/fan is a shareholder in each new generation of Firefly property. Advertisers could be offered a detailed and clearly defined market profile with a financial interest in providing market feedback via the 'Net, as ad revenues would directly affect the cost to each individual subscriber as well as any dividends paid out once the system reaches profit-making scale. Browncoats continue to recruit new fans, because the cost per fan goes down as more people subscribe, and the value of those eyeballs to advertisers goes up.
Mal don't do his bankin' at First Alliance, why should we?
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