Pretty much. They had the script being written long before, but the picture went to their marketing department way back in 2003. Serenitymovie.com was regged before Firefly was even out on DeeVeeDee. When it was officially greenlit, they already had all the budgets etc set, which was because they'd spent donkies workin' on it.

Making money off the campaign, or making money off the book? Odds are you're going to get flack from the fandom in general, and your visibility will likely result in some scrutiny. Stuff will get twisted. But I wouldn't worry about it.

The section I was referring to states:

Beatrice writes, "if the studio is choosing to use the campaign we built to save the show as the backbone to its marketing, shouldn't we get a cut of the profits?" Done the Impossible, on the other hand, are donating proceeds from the sale of the video to "Joss Whedon's favorite charity, Equality Now," and Browncoats have repeatedly held screenings of Serenity to benefit the charity and get the word out about the movie.

Here's the whole piece: [link]

The juxtaposition does make it sound a bit like Allyson's bitching about not getting a cut, rather than using it to make a point. Either the writer totally didn't get it, or it's a pretty manipulative bit of insinuation.

I'm going with manipulative insinuation. It's too much of a dig.

Yeah, it read like nasty twist, to me. I'm assuming this person got that quote from your Firefly essay in your book. If s/he read the essay, she knows better.

I can't really interpret it because I'm so appalled by the writing.

...That was written by an English major from Brown? Yeesh.

That bit sounded like a dig, with money quotes thrown in, so it's below the belt by the author. IMHO.

I think Allyson's right. Fans didn't get the movie made. Fans made it desirable for Universal to make a movie...and that's a pretty big difference.

Some bright kid at Universal saw all the brouhaha, or had it pointed out to him or her or whatever and where fans see passion and love and fiery determination to keep a vision going, Bright Star saw $$ and heard a "cha-ching" sound in his head.

In that view, we weren't a "force to be reckoned with". We were a "market".

Either way, we got a cool movie, though.

I think Universal wanted Joss, and Joss wanted to make the movie.

Me also. There's an interview with Joss fairly early on where he says Universal weren't even aware about the fan thing even existing.

Make no mistake: Uni used fans as a marketing tool. It gave them a great media pitch, and by giving the fans vague resources it gave them free advertising. And I have no problem with that -- they used me, for example, and I used them and had a fucking good time in the process.