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.
What Cindy said. Joss was their motivation. Not Serenifly.
For those convention people, there's 4 Serenity conventions later this year. (Yes, that will go well).
There's a Serenity one in the UK in October, then Creation are running a Serenity convention in LA in October, and the same weekend there's a Serenity convention in Australia. Then the following weekend there's ANOTHER Serenity convention in LA (Starfury). Then a few weeks later there's the Browncoat Cruise.
And the Browncoat Ball is in Philly the last weekend of September.
Browncoat's are gonna be busy. Looks like I'm doing the second LA thing.
I'm currently listening to Ed Gerhard's Live album and missing Firefly quite a lot.
Just saw this on Steven Brust's livejournal, dated April 8:
In other news, I'm finishing up a last polish on the Firefly novel, after which I'll send it to my agent, and, presumably, some time after that I'll figure out how to publish it as fanfic. Those who know, hang on to your information for a little while.
Just got a notice that Serenity is on sale from NetFlix for $5.99: [link]