Second Round of Serenity Screenings Sold Out 199
j1ggl3x writes "From a Rotten Tomatoes news article:
'Following the sell-out success of the May 5th pre-screenings, creator Joss Whedon recently announced that more advance previews of his movie Serenity would appear at twenty theaters in twenty cities, this time on May 26th. By the next morning, well before the official list of cities was posted, fans on the Serenity movie site and elsewhere had diligently located half the listings through trial and error and several of the locations were already sold out. Serenity hits theaters on September 30th.'"
Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:5, Interesting)
I was lucky enough to attend one of the first 10 screenings. I think the film is good enough to make it on its own except for the character development. Firefly fans won't have a problem here, but with 9 characters to deal with, there just isn't enough time in a 2 hour movie to really introduce them all, much less give any real information about them which would let them shine. I hope this doesn't detract from the film for the general audience.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:5, Funny)
i thought they just liked explosions and sex.
Berman? (Score:5, Funny)
i thought they just liked explosions and sex.
Rick Berman? Is that you? Tell us more of this great wisdom about how to pummel a science fiction franchise into the ground.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
If you want Firefly to come back, you have to get more people interested in it.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
So you know how many fans there are?
Fox cancelled it because of politics (Score:5, Funny)
Fox couldn't stand having themselves portrayed as the baddies.
Re:Fox cancelled it because of politics (Score:2)
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:4, Interesting)
5 million sold since it has been released.
So, Fox has made somewhere around $200 million off that series so far..
Most companies consider $200 million a fairly decent amount to make off a series that has had a multiyear run.. For a show that was cancelled before it even got a run is pretty far removed from the norm.
You really need to do that math, but that would require a bit more processing than you seem to be able to manage.
This particlar vocal sub-group put a lot of money on the table.
Networks are in the "Make Money" business. Fox and a number of other networks now make more off the DVD sales on a series than on the broadcast of the series.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
New FOX business plan... (Score:2)
Keeps production costs down, improving margin on later DVD sales!
Re:New FOX business plan... (Score:2)
Therefore it's doomed, because FOX seems to drop every good show which is not a cartoon.
Oh well, the first (and only) season DVD set will go nicely on the shelf next to the "Jeeves and Wooster" disks.
Re:New FOX business plan... (Score:2)
Just saw "House" the other day though and it is indeed excellent. I have little interest in the entire medical drama genre (I think TiVo actually gives it the best tags: Medical and Mystery though I'd probably want to add in Comedy. Then again TiVo also described Sealab 2021 as: Drama, Fantasy) but a season pass went on the TiVo as s
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:4, Informative)
That works out to $15 profit per set, and doesn't include other potential expenses, so if 5 million sets were sold, that's only $75 million.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/business [imdb.com]
"budget $40,000,000 (estimated)"
Throw in an average ticket price of $5 and the thing has posted $35 million over its production costs....
Just off its established fanbase.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
Movie rentals are 4.50 these days, how the heck did you get an average of 5? I say it's closer to 8$.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
I have to agree that $5 is a bit short. That's closer to the average matinee or possibly student rate (gotta love my town, a college town near an army base and the only place in town doesn't offer discount for students or the military). I pay $5 by getting passes through AAA. Normal rates are closer to $7 or $7.50.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
If its made even $40K (let alone 40M) off these screenings then those must be VERY expensive tickets.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:5, Insightful)
did anybody here pass economics? Ok... how about at least TOOK economics?
There's a big difference between revenue and profit.
Going from the math above, fox POSSIBLY brought in $75 million for the DVD's (that's not counting promotional costs, etc etc).
Did the shows cost nothing to produce? 14 episodes of a SciFi show.... i would bet $5million an episode is a reasonable estimate. Thats $70 million in costs right there. Plus marketing, blah blah blah.
Yes the DVD has been a hit. In numbers. But you can't say it made fox a fortune. It more than likely is just covering the costs that the show LOST during its run.
Fox choose not to air it (Score:3, Informative)
The show lost no money to Fox. Fox choose to pay for production, and then did not air it. Or aired it at exotic times in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. I'm wondering if did better or worse than the test pattern or the infomercial on the other channels. Since no one knew in advance it would be on at that time, how could anyone see it?
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
I took 50% off for distributor, retail store claim off the MSRP to get a guestimate of wholesale price, counted $5 per box set for the production costs, assumed little marketting, and just gave a raw number, not taking into consideration the original production costs since it was a for-TV, not for-DVD, show (counting those as writeoffs or recouped, since the show
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:3, Funny)
Yep, I walked past a class. Really hot chicks inside!
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:3, Informative)
Under two mill (and there was no marketing) - they made that back on the first run, but they wanted more, not just to break even.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:3, Insightful)
In the patched-elbow world of economics, profits mean excess after cost + acceptable return for the investment. Given that line of thought, profits in an competitive market gravitate towards 0, meaning participants earn the acceptable return on investment, but no more.
So, revenue > cost may not generate enough to cover the expected return for the risk involved; I don't know what type of return the industry expects from t
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
Make a case they didn't mean it. You're also going to have to make a case that all the anonymous cowards are just goofing.. And, this is
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
This is obviously bad reasoning (you can still make a shitload off DVDs regardless of your primary business method), so the GP post was correcting it.
Remember kids, check your comment-indentations and browsing karma limits before assuming anything about a conversation...
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
And people wonder why the networks aren't behind P2P/BitTorrent.
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:2)
'nuff said
Begs the obvious question... (Score:2)
So... who has the future *DVD* rights? Fox has what's out there, but do they have a lock on anything series-related in other mediums?
What's to stop Joss/Universal/whoever getting Nathan & the crew back for a couple more "seasons" released direct to DVD?
Re:Man, Fox really dodged a bullet (Score:5, Interesting)
It is possible, and I like the way your conspiratorial mind works. However, they could have sold season 1 DVDs and still made a eason 2.
The inside story is, that FireFly was the "baby" of an ousted executive. If FireFly did well then there would be all sorts of questions along the lines of "Why are were firing guys who are making hit shows?"
The solution was well documented -- tank the show by showing them out of order, not advertising them, and then changing the show times so you couldn't catch them. I remember seeing the adverts on TV and going "that looks COOL!!" and then I couldn't find it.
Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:2)
Re:Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:2)
Re:Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:2)
Fillian might have been referring to the actor's contracts. That would be a different deal, but I do not know the terms of those.
Re:Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:2)
Universal would have to be worried that Fox might renew the show and they'd lose all the advantages from the movie. Sequels are easy, safe money. If Universal is taking the risk of a possible flop of a movie (Whedon has had far more success with TV than movies -- his best aspect is his ability to evolve characters in interesting ways o
Re:Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:2)
In any case, he *did* say something along the lines of "The TV show is over. We have the movie now."
It was fairly obvious from everything else related said that Joss has no love for Fox, and I have a feeling that even if they offered the show back at this point, he wouldn't take it, since that's kind of how their mistreatment of the show began -- they got him for a show
Don't get your hopes too high : ) (Score:2)
To be fair, that is a trend in Hollywood right now. They all want to have the next magic money making trilogy, so they get all the actors to sign for 3 movies. If the first one is a phenomenal sucess: they make 2 more.
Re:Don't get your hopes too high : ) (Score:2)
A trend right now? Trilogies have been "the trend" in Hollywood for decades. Raiders of the Lost Ark? Star Wars? The Godfather? They've just gotten more shrewd about keeping options for trilogies open when launching a movie with possible trilogy potential.
Personally, I think they should stuff the whole "trilogy" concept where Firefly is concerned .. just keep making movies, a la Star Trek, as long as they bring the money in. Who cares how many there are?
Btw, wouldn't it be cool to have a scene where the S
Re:Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:2)
I know I like it enough to spend $20 per episode delivered weekly/monthly.
Not quite movie, not quite TV...
Re:Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:2)
Currently, one of the highest cost TV shows is Star Trek. MSRP is $130 for season 1, 29 episodes. That's about $4.50 per episode. Season 2 runs the same price for 26 episodes, or $5 per episode. Same for Enterprise season 1. Babylon 5 has similar costs.
For comparison, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer's MSRP for a complete season (say, season 2) is $60 for 22 episodes, or about $2.75. Dead Like Me goes for about $4.25/ep, Penn and Teller'
Re:Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:2)
Re:Fox Drops the Ball Yet Again (Score:3, Informative)
Sold out before they were even announced. (Score:4, Informative)
To the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ladies and Gentlemen. Now THOSE are fans.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:3, Informative)
Serenity - Feature length film based on Firefly, which Fox cancelled a couple of years ago.
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, Fox blew their own series because they didn't know what they were doing.
It's also a space western, which is a pretty tough theme to like, but somehow managed to capture the essence of what worked with the episodes of Star Trek that worked. Even though pretty much none of the characters are good guys (the captain kills people who he thinks deserves it, the crew members betray eachother for money, the pilot keeps wearing Hawaiian shirts), they're somehow likable in a bad guy way... Sort of like Han before Lucas bastardized him into a saturday morning cartoon. The old-west themes of cattle rustling and smuggling just add to the charm and the outlaw atmosphere. It was a pretty good step, in other words, to reduce what will likely be a nastily complicated future involving DRM, standards compliances, interoperability problems, technological glitches, and complicated social procedures based upon years of snowballing bureaucracy to something archaically approachable focused more on characters. Not once in the entire 12 episodes was there a spot of technobabble or an episode focused upon getting the holodeck to work. It was all about the characters, which really shined through on the DVD's.
It was good, but Fox blew their chance by thinking that it was The Simpsons. Hopefully the movie will rectify this to some degree. And if the movie does well, they can replay the TV shows. Most people haven't seen them anyway.
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2)
I picked up the season 1 DVD recently based on recommendations (plus it was on special and I had enjoyed Buffy & Angel!). I really really liked it, the characters, humour, SFX, plots are great. But it took a few shows to get into and I have to admit that my very first impressions were that it was not as good as everyone said. The on
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2)
Funny, I had the exact opposite impression. It was love at first sight for me and I thought it was even BETTER than everyone had said (if that's possible). It played to me like Star Wars if Lucas had realized his ideas were laughably rediculous and ran with it. But after watching the whole thing, it didn't quite hold up to the promise of the first few episodes. The repeti
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2)
Are US networks actually geared up to show serials. The paradigm of "show some episodes, repeat some episodes, show some more episodes" appears to be the norm.
In other words, Fox blew
Oh no, you didn't... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2)
Like someone mentioned above [slashdot.org], it could either be superhuman incompetance, or some executive war where one was bright and produced a good show, and the other was cunning and got it on the random shifting time slot of death. In other words: Petty sabotage.
the pilot keeps wearing Hawaiian shirts
I wonder if he comes from a core planet of hawaiian shirt people and he got the frontiere job to show off his piloting skills in a less regul
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2)
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2)
Way to recommend it, dude...
James
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2)
Travelling that slowly in space is not "hard SF", but of course it's dramatic (but that could have been achieved by having the ships travelling in almost the same direction and hence taking a long time to pass each other).
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2)
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2)
However, your geek badge is under review should you choose NOT to watch all the DVDs in less than a week: as per regular first-viewing habits.
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2, Insightful)
you know you are broken when you get up early to watch more the following morning. of course, doing it this way means you are devasted when you reach the end and there's no more.
Re:I'm going to be asked to turn in my geek badge. (Score:2)
:)
Quick Comment (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quick Comment (Score:2)
I think those screenings a a viral marketing ploy: seeding word-of-mouth advertising.
This movie won't only be reviewed before it's release by a handfull of critics, but also by legions of fans!
dammit (Score:2)
Wow. (Score:4, Funny)
They should make a TV show out of it or something...
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Where are the 20 cities? (Score:2)
Re:Where are the 20 cities? (Score:4, Informative)
ebay tickets for screenings (Score:2, Interesting)
Canada (Score:2, Funny)
Joss, if you bring the movie here early then we will gladly give you some bacon and beer. Think about it and get back to me.
PvP (Score:2)
just out of curiousity? (Score:2)
I was just curious if the movie actually develops the story or is it a side story that doesn't have to deal much with the main storyline (meaning that one can watch the series and future series w/o watching the movie).
I'm personally a big FireFly fan and also a big anime fan, but I've been disappointed by anime movies once too often. Anime compan
Re:just out of curiousity? (Score:3, Informative)
It takes place six month after "Objects in Space", and we get to learn River Tam's story.
Also: Reavers!
Re:just out of curiousity? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:just out of curiousity? (Score:2)
Re:just out of curiousity? (Score:3, Funny)
Well, I got my ticket!
damn! foiled again! (Score:2)
mod -1 redundant
This early?!?! (Score:2)
Re:This early?!?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not this early? (Score:2, Interesting)
This late (Score:3, Informative)
It was supposed to be released in late march.
But their producer's marketing department got wind of how much Lucas was putting in his promos and they decided that there was no way they could compete with his advertising, so they pushed it back.
Re:guaranteed to fail (Score:5, Funny)
Re:guaranteed to fail (Score:2)
Have the kooks chained themselves to the theatre doors yet?
Re:guaranteed to fail (Score:2)
Re:guaranteed to fail (Score:2)
Re:guaranteed to fail (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ticket Sales (Score:2)
Re:This blows. (Score:2)
Re:This blows. (Score:2)
I've got no love for MPAA or RIAA, and I rarely watch broadcast TV. I buy the episodes of shows I like (Stargate, Smallville, Firefly, as well as some ancient stuff that just isn't shown anymore) as they come out on DVD.
Re:This blows. (Score:3, Interesting)
After hearing about it, I downloaded about 9 episodes. Loved them.
Then I heard that the DVD set was available on Amazon for 35$. Erased my downloaded copies and bought the DVDs.
I would of never bought the DVDs without having pirated the episodes first.
Re:This blows. (Score:2)
Re:This blows. (Score:2)
I don't watch commercials.
Downloaded, or otherwise.
Re:Why is this important? This is the 3rd time (Score:5, Interesting)
You probably could argue that TV is generally lame, and that is difficult to dispute. However, I've found Joss Whedon's work to be generally better than most of the shows out there. He deals with a lot of interesting themes in a very entertaining way without talking down to his audience.
More than that, he takes risks with his work. He kills off beloved characters if it serves his story, regardless of the fan reaction. He did a show that was almost entirely without dialogue and an hour-long musical episode.
These approaches could have ended up as cheap gimmicks, but usually they worked really well. I think a lot of people want to see entertainment that does try to be different. I think geeks and nerds are used to seeing value in things that other people might not understand.
Is a sci-fi movie ultimately stuff that matters? Perhaps not compared perhaps to environmental issues, war, and politics. But life has to be about more than that. Art, music, and culture have their places as well. Wide availablity and low accessibility don't necessarily disqualify popular mediums from being art and being important in its own way.
It sounds like you haven't really seen any of Mr. Whedon's work. I suggest you rent a few of the Buffy TV series DVD's or the Firefly collection and try it. You might find you like it, or at the very least, have a more informed dislike of it.
Re:Why is this important? This is the 3rd time (Score:2)
Don't forget the last episode of Firefly, "Objects in Space". Watch the episode twice. The first time you are interested but confused. The second time you start to notice lots of philosophical touches. Then listen to the commentary for the episode on the DVD, and understand why it is su
Re:Why is this important? This is the 3rd time (Score:2)
Oh, and you made a grammar-- er, I mean, speling eror.
Re:I just never "got" it. (Score:2, Funny)
Mind you, if there's even a chance that Morena Baccarin and Jewel Staite might be spanking each other, you can mark another ticket sold.