Firefly

Serenity Takes Off Soon

Joss Whedon-who is directing Serenity, a movie version of his SF western TV series Firefly-told SCI FI Wire that he will begin production in three weeks, with all of the original cast members in place, led by Nathan Fillion. Compared with the Fox series, the movie will be "bigger, faster, stronger," Whedon said in an interview at the Saturn Awards in Los Angeles. "The show plays on a very small, personal level. And while I want that to work in the movie, the movie has an epic quality and a resolve that you simply can’t afford in a TV show. Because if you have the epic quality, you run out of money, and if you have the resolve, you run out of ideas. ... The movie is really like, if you took a giant hit of the show all at once. It’s very big. Perhaps I should use different imagery."

Whedon added that the movie will wrap up story points left dangling when Fox unceremoniously canceled the show in the middle of its first season. "It won’t wrap up all the storylines," he said. "It’s not a miniseries. It’s a movie. But it does deal with some of the outstanding questions of the show. Like River [Summer Glau]. River is a very important question in the show."

Whedon added that the movie will be shot in Los Angeles on all-new sets. "They’re a little grander in scale," he said. "They’re a little more movie-like. ... Everything outside of Serenity is a place we haven’t visited and people we’ve not seen, but it is the world that was from the show." Serenity is aiming at a 2005 release.