Firefly

I love “Firefly” – so much so every time I’d see it I’d squeeze its cheeks, bring it in closer and share saliva with it. It’s a show that had the danglers to say “screw you! We’re not going anywhere!” despite the fact the network yanked it after 12 episodes. And then, just when it looked like it was done, it remerged as a full-length mother-hoppin’ movie – and by golly if it didn’t bring a lump to George Lucas’s throat.

When Alan Tudyk told me on the phone this morning that a sequel to “Serenity” – that’s the name of the “Firefly” movie for those who’ve been up at Guantanamo Bay for the past couple of years – could be happening I just about dropped the phone (I didn’t though, because the last time I did that it landed in the loo. Fried itself. And as a consequence, I lost all my numbers.) Tudyk says the newly-released “Serenity : Special Edition“ DVD has been selling so hot, that there’s talk in doing another movie.

“They had to put [the new DVD] out because they’ve been selling out of the other one and so Universal’s like ‘So, let’s do another one’. And now… there’s now a chance there’s going to be another movie”.

Tudyk agrees that even if it was a direct-to-DVD movie, it’d still be worthwhile. Especially since the whole DVD sequel is a big trend.

“It really is”, says Tudyk. “Everybody in the Firefly crew – and that includes the ones who died in the movie – are excited about the prospect of doing another”.

Nathan Fillion, says Tudyk, is especially keen. “We were out a couple of weeks ago together at a party and there was a bunch of people there, and he was like ‘Oh, look we’re Browncoats”.

Great to hear Fillion’s still as crazy as ever about wearing the Tightpants again.

Tudyk says he heard from creator Joss Whedon a few weeks back – but mainly about Tudyk’s role in the new Western “3:10 to Yuma”. “He sent me an email when it first came out because at first he thought I was a different character – by the trailer”, he laughs. “He was like ‘My god! You’re playing such a bad-ass!’ That was Ben Foster, who is such a bad-ass in that movie, and is just brilliant, just brilliant, and we both have a similar look – we both have polish genes – and anyway, Joss writes back ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise you were the sympathetic funny character – how would cast you as that?’. Joss, that would be you!”.

The actor, who appears in the new Frank Oz film “Death at a Funeral”, is absolutely blown-away by the life “Firefly” has had. He’s even headed downunder next week to appear at a science fiction convention. It amazes him even more that he got to do a feature film version of his 12-episode series. “That’s wild; you don’t see that happen until years later when it becomes a campy spoof of the thing. But even then, shows like Dukes of Hazzard and Starsky and Hutch were huge hits [from the beginning, and they didn’t do movies straight away] this was something that was a hit only with a group of people and it just grew.”

Likely to happen before a “Serenity” sequel though is an “I, Robot” sequel. Tudyk visited the set of Will Smith’s latest movie “I am Legend” to talk about the movie recently, and says he’d be super excited to play Sonny the robot again.

Yep, but what about Wash? Now that there’s the shizzle.