Firefly

Million dollar Firefly-inspired movie will film in 2012: UPDATED

Firefly is coming back... sort of. Fox hasn’t come to its senses and commissioned a new season of Joss Whedon’s ground-breaking space opera. But at least one man is doing his part to keep the story alive. UPDATED: No Firefly link!

In an interview with The Westmorland Gazette writer and director Rick McLeod revealed his current plan to resurrect the Firefly ’verse. And even though none of the classic Firefly characters will be making a cameo, the flick is still set during great space war that the television series is framed by:

The film, called Lost Transmission, follows the lonely adventure of Blake, captain of a mining ship, with no-one but his computer to talk to after war breaks out on Earth. But he leaves the planet to find life on other worlds.

And to top it all off, this indie production has a budget of one million dollars! Which means, this movie has a fighting chance of being pretty decent. Filming is slated to begin in 2012.

UPDATE: According to the the production company Celtic Storm Films, there is no link to Firefly at all. The Westmorland Gazette got the wrong end of the stick. But we still support indie films, especially movies that have "23rd century pirates." Sorry about the confusion everyone. Here’s the official statement.

Lost Transmission is an original science fiction movie. The Gazette article linked on io9.com erroneously said the film was "based on" Firefly, but as the concept’s author and the film’s director, I can say without qualification this is not accurate. All I ever told the journalist was that some of my inspirations came from various shows, including shows like Firefly, movies like Star Wars, and even video games like Elite. Sometimes reporters just write the story they want to. I have no permission from Fox to make a Firefly spinoff, and that’s not what Lost Transmission is. It is set in its own universe, with original characters, backstory, and names.