Firefly

Fox hits local ‘Firefly’ group with cease and desist

Tough break for area Firefly fans. Fox has hit San Antonio Browncoats with a cease and desist for public screenings of Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

SA Browncoats’ co-organizer Crystal Shedrock shared a copy of the notice that Fox sent to Emily Cleghorn, who runs SA Browncoats. Fox singled out the planned Buffy screening Friday at the Overtime Theater and the Firefly screening April 27 at Alamo Drafthouse Westlakes, noting “the unauthorized public performance of a copyrighted work constitutes copyright infringement.” Shedrock says both screenings are cancelled.

Fox notes that obtaining a public performance license is “relatively easy and usually requires no more than a phone call.” However, Fox can’t license public performances of TV episodes on account of guild restrictions.

I contacted Fox and they said no comment. As for what’s on Cleghorn’s mind right now, she calls the action a continuation of the adversarial relationship between Browncoats groups and Fox.

“They were the people who took it off the air to begin with,” Cleghorn says, referring to Fox’s cancellation of Firefly in 2002 during the show’s first and only season. “And now they’re taking it away from us again. That’s what it feels like.”

Cleghorn notes this doesn’t mean the end of San Antonio Browncoats. “We’ll just have to restructure how we’re going to work,” she says.

Cleghorn will still seek the rights to show the Firefly followup film Serenity at the Drafthouse this summer as part of the Can’t Stop the Serenity screenings, which celebrate Joss Whedon’s space western and raise money for the women’s rights organization Equality Now.