Firefly

Nathan Fillion, star of the upcoming SF movie Serenity, told SCI FI Wire that he’s enjoying the transition to film from his canceled Fox series Firefly. "Yeah, it’s a little different," Fillion said during a break in filming on the film’s Universal Studios set last August. "We had eight days to put on a one-hour show. Now we’ve got the better part of three months to put out a two-hour show. So the timing is a little different. But certainly I can tell that the quality is also extremely different."

Fillion reprises the role of Captain Mal Reynolds, skipper of a transport spaceship 400 years in the future. He welcomed the chance to revisit the world of the short-lived Firefly, created by Joss Whedon, who also wrote and directed Serenity. "The series being canceled was such a heartbreak," Fillion said. "I broke the cardinal rule of: Don’t fall in love with what you’re doing, because the rug can get yanked out from underneath you. And when it did, I was heartbroken. So Joss really had it in his head that he was going to get it made into a movie, and that’s a great dream. And I really wanted it to happen, but I couldn’t fall in love with that idea again, just to be heartbroken again. So we got the green light, Joss wrote a script, everything was rolling, we started doing rehearsals, we actually started filming. I don’t think it actually settled in until about three weeks into filming that we were actually making the movie.

Fillion added that he doesn’t feel pressure making the transition from TV star to headliner of a big-budget Hollywood movie. "I don’t feel a lot of that pressure," he said. "My schedule is much the same as it was on the series: I’m here a lot. But I get to perform with everybody in the cast. I get to have great scenes with all of these great characters that I fell in love with. I don’t feel a great deal of pressure. You know what, I’m starting to feel the thing, now that it’s wrapping up. I’m starting to feel that ... I just really hope people enjoy this movie. I really hope they do. I hope folks that ... weren’t fans of the series will catch this and maybe go get the DVD collection and say, ’What was I missing?’" Serenity opens Sept. 30. Serenity is produced by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.