Ever since Fox canceled its science fiction / Western TV series Firefly in 2003, fans have been clamoring for more stories from the world. Now, we’re going to get another series of adventures in book form. EW reports that Titan Books will release three new novels, the first of which will hit bookstores in October, with the publisher confirming that franchise creator Joss Whedon will be involved as a consulting editor. In Firefly: Big Damn Hero, written by author Nancy Holder, Captain Malcolm Reynolds (played in the show by Nathan Fillion) is captured by a band of Browncoat veterans. The next book, The Magnificent Nine, will be written by James Lovegrove for a March 2019 release. That story will take the crew of the ship to a desert moon after the ship’s mercenary Jayne Cobb (originated by Adam Baldwin) gets a distress call from an ex. In Tim Lebbon’s Firefly: Generations, the crew discovers an Ark ship that led humanity away from Earth. That book is set for release in October 2019. It's not entirely clear when the books are set in relation to the timeline of the TV series. Joss Whedon’s Firefly is coming back as a series of novels
I really enjoyed the series. I hope the books manage to live up to the spirit of the show. The characters were interesting and it managed to hold that western frontier vibe well.
I ain’t sure if it’s such a good idea. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Firefly so much but… Well, watching a flick ain’t the same thing as reading a book, y’know. You can’t, say, picture actors while reading a novel. Sure you can visualize them in your mind but watching real actors is certainly better. When reading a novelization, I more often than not don’t envision characters the same way they actually look. So I’d definitely prefer to have the 2d season instead of a series of novels. Come to think of it, there is one Firefly novelization already.
If the writing is solid and captures the characters, including dialogue, the books could do very well. I was a fan of Burn Notice, and there was a series of books that were released that I read to fill the time between seasons. They started out okay, but then the writers started going astray, things like projecting political opinions, for example, onto the characters that didn't match those of the show's portrayal of the characters. That soured me.
This is how I feel as well. I love the show, so I'm afraid that the books will be disappointing and sorta ruin my fond memories.
If I were a fan of the show, I’d be excited about it. As it is, I watched it but I’m not as fanatical about it as some people I know.
I heard somewhere there wouldn't be a second season because there's a movie already. But I was disappointed with Joss Whedon's later directing style tho, Firefly is a great show, but sadly the movie Serenity is just felt too fast-paced yet lackluster just like Joss Whedon's future directing with Avengers (not a fan for those films too).
I would point out that movies need to be faster paced, a series you can take the time with as people will come back to it, all the time.
It's a matter of not having the actual series length to show things happening. So everything you can explore in a 22 episode series of shows that last an hour (43-47 minutes each, technically, because commercial breaks) needs to be condensed into essentially 2-3 episodes. That leaves out a lot of slower-paced things. So while in a series, you can have multiple antagonists (think Reavers, the assassin dude, the thief gal that Mal wore a bonnet for) and explore many facets of a protagonist's character (Jayne's hat, Book's goals, Inara's life, Zoe's story, etc), you really have to distill things down to the barest minimum and ensure that the story doesn't wander around. That's why Serenity feels so "off" when compared to Firefly. It's not the editing or the directing so much; it's that, at its core, Firefly is beloved not because it's a showstopping blockbuster, but because fans care about each of the characters. You can't really condense what makes that big of a cast special down into one feature-length film. It didn't have the time budget to allow what was basically an ensemble cast of characters to each have their moments to shine, like the series did. ... Plus, it killed Walsh and Book - the heart and soul of the group, respectively. I'm pretty sure that was intentional on Whedon's part, kind of a final "fck you" to Fox. As far as the Avengers movies go, Whedon went on record about his disputes with Marvel and the company's meddling in his editing room. Ask any author and they'll tell you; it's the revisions and edits that make a novel good or bad. It's the same thing with movies.
So am I the only one here who think the Whedon's editing style degenerate from Firefly to Serenity? Maybe because I'm study film myself in college and had the experience to edit few shorts myself, so I'm particularly sensitive about things like this.
He was only the director on 3 episodes of Firefly, though. Serenity was also the first movie he directed, so I imagine that probably has something to do with the difference, too. He's only directed three feature-length films: Serenity (2005), The Avengers (2012), and The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Marvel meddles and forces scenes to stay in the script and final cut of all of their movies (like the whole dream sequence in Age of Ultron that was out of place and, well, terrible), so that they fit in the greater MCU, so Serenity is pretty much the only feature-length film he's ever edited on his own (not including everyone else involved in the process - I'm sure there are more people responsible for film edits than just the director).
Oh yeah I've mistaken before, I thought he directed most of the episode if not all since he kinda an auteur to certain degree in Firefly. And I've checked by the way, it seems only one editor following him in editing room since Firefly to Avengers Lisa Lassek It seems Joss Whedon more like a writer guy than director, which works well for TV show creators like Vince Gilligan, and people like him should create more original I think. Working for big studios usually left little to no creative power, only if you can create and produce your own film you have the final say in pre-production to post phase, unless you have some negotiation leverage you could use beforehand. Anyway, I googled around before, and found out Joss Whedon already denied few times the possibility of 2nd season.