BrownCoats Will Rise Again!

POSTED BY: BrownCoatKarma
UPDATED: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 08:50
VIEWED: 11354
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STARPILOTGRAINGER

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 1:34 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Astriana:

Jeremy is right in this. My roommate was at Dreamcon this past and got to interview Jewel Staite (who was one of the guests). Apparently, FOX still owns the TV rights to Firefly, and the contract states something about no one else being able to put another series together for 10 years...

Of course, that's just a contract. I'm sure if the movie does well and Universal thinks it's a good idea to try another series, they can either go to FOX to try and air it again, or say, 'We'll give you this amount of money to release the contract so we can find a place to air it elsewhere', it might be a win-win situation for both sides (of course, Fox could be spiteful and say 'No, we don't care that we could make money, we're not letting you make one').

Then of course, there are all sorts of potential loopholes in contracts; does it prevent only network series, or is cable excluded? What about a 'miniseries'? Is that a 'TV Series'? What about a single made for TV movie? Is that included? For that matter, what about an airing of 'Serenity, the Movie' on TV after a year or so? And does it include made for DVD series (hell, if Serenity can be the first TV series in my memory to get abruptly cancelled on TV, do amazingly well in DVD sales and then earn a movie, not 5 or 10 years after the series, but a mere 1 or 2, why can't it be another first and be the first DVD only series?)?

Anyway, I don't necessarily believe any of this will come to pass... mostly, it's a pipe dream, really... but contracts aren't ironclad, especially in Hollywood.

Star Pilot Grainger
"Remember, the enemy's gate is down."
LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/newnumber6

BROWNCOAT1

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 1:52 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Astriana:
Quote:
Originally posted by jaysedai:
Not that I want to discourage anyone from writing in. (Please do!) But, I should point out that I've read on numerous occasions that Universal's contract stipulates that the show can't make return to TV for a several years.

Now how many years, and from what date has been is up to debate. It may be possible for it to return to TV as early as 2006 or as late as 2009, depending on who you talk to.

Of course it could be just another baseless internet rumor. So don't listen to me, keep writing. But keep it polite, of course.

Jeremy is right in this. My roommate was at Dreamcon this past and got to interview Jewel Staite (who was one of the guests). Apparently, FOX still owns the TV rights to Firefly, and the contract states something about no one else being able to put another series together for 10 years...

~A~
El Jefe Magnifico's Mistress... of Communications and Harems...

...I'm still free,
You can't take the sky from me.

Contract, shmontract. When the potential for money & ratings is involved you can rest assured contracts can be bought out or renegotiated. If the potential for a big pay off is there, I imagine Universal (& NBC) will move mountains of legal paperwork to get a new series on the air.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

BROWNCOAT1

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 2:15 PM

Just received an email response from the Sci Fi addy:

Quote:
Thanks for your e-mail to the Sci Fi Programming Department. We
greatly appreciate all viewer input on the shows and movies we air.
Regrettably, the high volume of correspondence we now receive prevents
us from providing individual responses to each e-mail.

For programming information and other frequently asked questions,
please
see our quarterly grid:

http://www.scifi.com/feed.html (US)
http://www.scifi.com/sfeurope/sfecable.html (Europa)

our online ScheduleBot database:

http://www.scifi.com/schedulebot/

or our Sci Fi (US) Feedback FAQ:

http://www.scifi.com/feedback/FAQ1.html

If your question or comment was in reference to an online problem and
not
related to any on-air issues, please e-mail:

bboard@www.scifi.com for problems relating to SCIFI.COM BBoard
members@www.scifi.com for problems relating to SCIFI.COM
registration
or
tech@www.scifi.com for other technical problems

Thanks again for your feedback. Your comments are a valuable resource
as
we plan the future of our network.

Some sort of automated response. I am resending my email to the addys that look the most promising.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

LIZ

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 2:48 PM

curiosity about this contract.. everybody's mentioning it in reference to a new series... but aren't we writing to scifi to get old (already produced) episodes on the air? (it would be so much easier to convert people if i could say "checkout the scifi channel tonight at 8" rather than trying to pry my DVDs out of my hands to let someone borrow them.)

SHINY

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 2:49 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by jaysedai:
Not that I want to discourage anyone from writing in. (Please do!) But, I should point out that I've read on numerous occasions that Universal's contract stipulates that the show can't make return to TV for a several years.

Now how many years, and from what date has been is up to debate. It may be possible for it to return to TV as early as 2006 or as late as 2009, depending on who you talk to.

Do you happen to know if that applies only to new episodes, or re-airing the current episodes? My modest hope is simply to have the existing Firefly episodes air on Sci Fi US just like they aired on Sci Fi UK and On the Space channel in Canada. I imagine with all the browncoats we have, it's still a TINY percentage of the audience Sci Fi can reach, and the vast majority of Sci Fi channel watchers have probably still never heard of Firefly. If we can get them to watch it and buy the DVD and/or see the movie, it makes the possibility of TPTB re-negotiating the contract to bring FF back to the airwaves that much more likely.

* runs off to send a third e-mail from a different account *

"I left my heart in Serenity Valley"

SHINY

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BrownCoatKarma:
The guy I know served with me , his father got him a job with the sci fi network. We just gotta keep on sendin emails and tellin' others , this show is to damn good to be thrown in a damn basement. Its very rare to come across such great television. We can't let the corprate machine win!

Karma, do you know how influential your friend (and/or his father) are at SciFiNetwork? Is he an exec, a mid-level manager/director, or a working grunt? Just wanted to gague the likelihood of this actually making a difference.

"I left my heart in Serenity Valley"

BROWNCOAT1

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:36 PM

I would be very happy to see a re-airing of all the episodes. With Universal making the movie, it just seems like smart business to me to market the movie by showing the series that inspired the movie. The episodes would get new viewers interested and help to add a good deal of people to the fanbase. Airing the episodes would do as much to promote the movie as an trailer.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

PROFESSOR

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 6:12 PM

It would be interesting to actually see the contract that prevents "Firefly" from returning as a TV series.

I wonder if it would prevent a show called "Serenity" from being put on the air?

RUTHIE

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 7:24 PM

Any ideas how the USA Sci-Fi channel and the UK one are related?
Because here in the UK, Sci-Fi showed Firefly originally - and a jolly good job they made of it, too, showing each episode in the RIGHT order (starting with Serenity), with a new ep each Monday mid-evening, a late-night repeat, and two or three more repeats through the week, ending with the previous ep immediatly before the new one.
And they showed the eps that were un-aired in the USA.

So Sci-Fi UK knows all about Firefly, and must own some sort of showing right to it. May be worth telling your friend to contact his UK collegues.

*******************
Ruthie
*******************
By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man - man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him. (R.A.Heinlein)

CARDIE

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 8:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Professor:
It would be interesting to actually see the contract that prevents "Firefly" from returning as a TV series.

I wonder if it would prevent a show called "Serenity" from being put on the air?

The more I think about this, the more likely it seems that it's Universal who have insisted on the moratorium on a new Firefly universe television series. (They pay their lawyers plenty, so there's not going to be a loophole that allows for a Firefly universe series under a different name.)

It's been reported repeatedly that Universal is looking for Serenity to be part of a feature film franchise, probably with tie-ins to their theme parks as well. They also had been trying to sign Joss to a feature film deal for quite a while.

Now the last thing Universal wants over the five to ten years they might be making Serenity and its sequels, is for free adventures of the crew to be broadcast, competing for the moviegoing dollar and sending the profits to 20th-Century Fox, no matter where they would be aired.

So I can see NBC-Universal happy to rerun the existing episodes on Sci-Fi if the price is right, and running the Firefly movies there, too, but they obviously only agreed to make the BDM and any possible sequels on the condition that no new television series was allowed to compete with them. That only makes sense from their point of view.

Cardie

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