Containing Vectors-Tracking ME Writers

[gspiggott]

Good Lord, those Whedonites are so touchy they make Scientologists seem well adjusted. Serenity takes ten million with a huge publicity campaign, and lots of favorable media, and next week they have to contend with Wallace and Gromit. If it was expected to take 15 million then it underperformed pretty dramatically.

[aceivan]

This is from to-day's Metro. The reaction from Whedon to some mild criticism is interesting.

Joss Whedon is not used to failure. Best known for creating the global phenomenon that is Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the closest the writer-director ever came to such a feeling was penning the script for the much-maligned Alien:Resurrection in 1997. But that was before his 2002 sci-fi series, Firefly, was canned by Fox after just a handful of episodes.

'I will never understand as long as I live what happened to that show - why they hated it and why they buried it and why they cancelled it,' he huffs. 'They did and they did and they did. However, the only question I asked them was: "Will you let me take this story somewhere else?" Fox agreed, allowing Whedon and his 'monster' - what he calls 'my love of this show' - to head out into the world. Three years on, and finally he has found Serenity.

That's the name of the film Universal has allowed Whedon to create from the ashes of Firefly. Heavily influenced by the 'lived-in' look of both Alien and Star Wars, it's evident that the 41-year-old fantasy fan has been watching too much Episode IV - not least because Serenity's captain, Mal Reynolds, and his crew are hired to transport to safety a doctor and his telepathic sister, two fugitives on the run from the so-called Alliance that rules the galaxy. There's also more than a little whiff of the Millenium Falcon about Reynolds' ship, Firefly. Whedon just shrugs and looks away. 'For me, science fiction is like room tone. It's just in me. Fantasy is my favourite thing and will always be part of what I do. That's a given.'

Trying to strike a balance between creating a stand-alone film and one that embraces the spirit of the series, Whedon admits 'was the most frustrating experience of my career and the hardest thing I've ever done'. Serenity is not, he says, just a glorified episode of television nor a glorified beginning of a franchise. 'If it's dependent on the series, it's a failure,' he states plainly. 'If it's dependent on the sequal, it's a failure.' To help himself, he didn't even watch the old episodes of the show. 'In fact, with the trivia questions about the series on the website, I kept failing! And these were trivia questions for scenes I'd written - and in some cases directed - for the show. But I distanced myself from it.'

This included changing the title from Firefly, which Whedon - whose father and grandfather both wrote US sitcoms in their time - had no qualms about doing. 'The movie is really about serenity,' he says. 'It's about the idea of peace and freedom, and how you are trying to create this little personal space. For non-fans, it was just a word. For fans, it's a word they know very well. They'll recognise it and they won't be offended by it.'

And LA-based Whedon claims he hasn't given up on TV just yet. 'I have waited to make movies my whole life. But I adore TV. I want to do both.'

James Mottram

Len

[Sheridan]

Genre fans tend to hit the theatres early while art house and romantic films tend to have audeinces that come in by word of mouth. It''s quite likely that Sereneshit will drop 40-50% next weekend.

Sounds good to me, even if the fanboys go twice they can't save this turkey, especially as the word of mouth from the more general movie goers is likely to be along the lines of 'well if you're a fan of the series go but otherwise...'

'I will never understand as long as I live what happened to that show - why they hated it and why they buried it and why they cancelled it,' he huffs. 'They did and they did and they did.

I believe him when he says he will never understand it, after all he would have to question his basic beliefs that viewers like gloom and doom and that he didn't turn people off his work with S6 and 7 on Buffy. Fact is at the end of S5 I was looking forward to Firefly, by the end of S6 you couldn't pay me to watch it.

[sam7777]

Actually, I calculated the drop off incorrectly in my last post. Genre stuff actuallly drops much more than 25-30% the wknd after it's opening wknd:

Sky Captain released in Sep 2004 actually dropped 57% from $15,580,278 to $6,658,035. "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" also released Sep 2004 dropped 62% from $23,036,273 to $8,656,591. The "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" released Sep 2005 dropped 51% from $30,054,300 to $14,851,719.

Given the correction I revise my estimate of Sereneshit's drop off to 60-70%. Motice in the above shit that the lowest drop was for Emily Rose which skewed female. Sereneshit skews male so will see a big drop off IMHO. The numbers are actually worse than those for "Highlander Endgame" only grossed $6,223,330 but that was on 1,543 Screens (or 30% less than Sereneshit's 2,188 theatres) and was 41% of Highlander's $15 million budget. OTOH, Sereneshit made only 20-25% of it's $40-50 million budget. A big drop off next week will put making it's money back in it's ftheatrical release out of reach and while the money will be made back on DVD, it also puts a franchise out of reach IMHO. Highlander went on to get 85% of it's budget during it's theatrical release. I don't think that Sereneshit will do as well.

September is just shitty month for genre releases. If Universal really had any faith in the film as a potential franchise they would have releases it in summer IMHO.

[Sheridan]

A good analysis Sam but you forgot to mention that Edngame came out five years ago and ticket prices have gone up in the mean time so it may actually have sold say three quarters as many tickets as Serentity but ony taken two thirds the money.

Edited to add:
After posting I did a little checking and found these figures for ticket prices at the NATO(Natnional Association of Theatre Owners) website:

2004 $6.21
2003 6.03
2002 5.80
2001 5.65
2000 5.39

I've heard that this year its more like $6.50 so in 2005 prices Endgame would have taken about $7.5 million, and as Sam said that was in a lot fewer theatres.

[WebWarlock]

Nice little feel good article on FF/S.

http://www2.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=4581

REQUIEM FOR THE BROWNCOATS
10.02.05
By Devin Faraci
It’s like the battle of Serenity Valley all over again. The numbers are in and the Browncoats lost – Joss Whedon’s Serenity underperformed at the box office this weekend in a pretty big way, making it incredibly unlikely that there will ever be a sequel.

Across America something under 1 million fans are scratching their heads, having believed that their base was bigger and their voice was louder. In the following days they’ll begin assigning blame, trying to figure out why the movie didn’t make enough money. In the end they should just be happy that they got the film, and more than slightly ashamed that they conferred a weird group identity upon themselves.

I had long said that the film wouldn’t open. I wanted to be wrong – while Serenity isn’t one of my favorite movies of the year, and I think it’s guilty of some very lazy writing from a usually un-lazy writer, it’s the kind of movie that deserves to do well. I never connected to the whole Firefly universe the way I did to the Buffy universe, but I could appreciate the characters and some of the weird snippets that made it special. And Whedon is a guy who should get some mainstream success one of these days.

But I was right, and I think the film didn’t open for a number of reasons, and Universal, who is sure to get most of the Browncoat scorn, was the least of the movie’s problems. First of all, the name of the film is terrible. Serenity carries no meaning and evokes no imagery for the casual filmgoer. I imagine most people thought that the character of River was Serenity, and I can’t blame them for that. What should the film have been called? Beats me, but Firefly wouldn’t have worked that much better in my opinion.

The ads did suck, that much is true. But I do believe that Universal poured money into their ad buys – I couldn’t escape Serenity ads this week, and I don’t watch a lot of TV. The film had full page ads in a number of my local major papers, including the Times. The problem with Universal’s campaign is that they tried to position Serenity as a cultural phenomenon, something where the underground was bubbling up to the mainstream. And the mainstream didn’t buy it – Serenity is a geek thing, and the mainstream is picky about what geek stuff it’ll take to.

Some fans will be mystified at how well the film was reviewed in comparison to its shoddy box office. Welcome to my life. I can’t tell you how many times I see films that are great, and that great reviews, only to have them sink upon release. The fact of the matter is that the audience isn’t looking for a good movie – God knows the continued success of Flightplan proves that. But that's the story of the movies, and that's the story even around here - many a weekend has made me sad as the discussion thread for a piece of shit blockbuster gets ten times the replies as the thread for a gem of a smaller film.

In the end, though, I just don’t think this should have ever been a movie. This concept, the world of Serenity and Firefly, was custom made for TV. With 9 leads and a potentially complicated main mystery, there was too much for a two hour film. At the Serenity junket in LA a few weeks back, Whedon said that this film brought the story where the TV show would have gone. I think that a TV given 5 seasons to tell this story would have made it work. As it stands, everything is too squished in. Whedon needed to either drop his original story and come up with something more suited to a two hour film, or he needed to not worry about that story at all and just tell a rollicking tale in the Serenity/Firefly universe.

Now what? It’s over, most likely. The movie was made largely because of DVD sales of the TV show box set. Even if the movie does gangbusters on DVD, no one is making that mistake twice. The film will, most likely, make some money overseas (although I tend to think not in non-English markets) and will definitely earn a bunch on DVD, but domestic box office is generally what it’s all about. As for a return to TV, I don’t know if Whedon and company would be willing to go back after taking their shot at the majors and missing.

At the end of this weekend, I wish the Browncoats would take a moment from their finger pointing and take a long hard look at themselves and ask if their in-your-face evangelizing didn’t hurt this film more than it helped. I believe there is a huge awareness of this movie, and I believe there are many people who are predisposed to seeing scifi films who stayed home this weekend. The question has to be, “Why?” I think that more and more the actions of small, hardcore fanbases – like Trekkies and the increasingly marginalized Star Wars fruitcakes – are becoming distasteful to the more mainstream genre audience.

Interesting piece to be sure.

This guy obviously likes Whedon and yet he is still writing him off. I agree with him that the name, Serenity, really sucked. Looking at the poster I can now see his point. You see the name and you see the girl, bam contect the dots. It meant nothing.

My buddy Steve, who has been in the film biz, for years said it would suck because of the name.

Now get this. Apparently this opinion piece has ruffled the feathers of Jossy himself. Read and be amused.

http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=4590

HOWDY, JOSS
10.03.05
By Devin Faraci
I find myself in a weird position this morning. It seems that my editorial from last night about the box office take of Serenity (and I think it’s important to stress here that it’s an editorial, an opinion piece) has attracted the attention of no less a luminary than Joss Whedon himself. This is sort of a weird position because I’m actually a pretty big fan of Whedon’s work – I have a “Once More With Feeling” poster framed in my living room and I made sure I got out to Los Angeles for the Serenity junket (Universal wouldn’t pay my way) because the opportunity to meet and interview the man was too much to miss out on.

Now that I’ve established something of my geek bona fides in this matter, I want to address some of the brouhaha that has arisen from the piece, and the points that Joss makes (for the text of his remarks, visit this site, or check out this thread on our message board).

I’m not a box office expert, and Joss has access to Universal’s best number crunchers and executives, but from where I’m sitting this thing looks like it’s essentially over. Going by the standard situation, Serenity is in for a 40% drop next weekend (and that’s really generous, as films – especially genre films – have tended to drop more than that in the second weekend this past year or so), which means it’ll likely take in 6-7 million. Joss is right in that this was a soft weekend – per screen averages were weak across the board, it seems – but I don’t know if that’s due to some exterior force or just people didn’t see anything they wanted to go to the movies for this weekend. The month of September certainly wasn’t that soft a month, even with a couple of hurricanes being a major outside force that could have affected box office.

Again, I’m no expert, but it looks like 30 million is where this thing might come to a rest. If I’m right that’s too bad, as I said in the original editorial. The film deserves to be a success. I have nit-picky issues with it, but I gave it an 8 out of 10 in my review, and I stand by the fact that it’s as good a sci-fi adventure film as we’ve seen in a long while.

The thing that really stuck in Joss’ craw, though, was my dismissal of the Browncoats. He doesn’t cotton to me laying the blame for the film’s weak take at their feet. I wouldn’t cotton to that either, if I had done that. I do wonder why the film couldn’t bring out a genre core audience (the people who probably helped the just as hard to market Hellboy to a 23 million dollar opening weekend – now some of that may have been release date, to be fair. I am becoming a believer lately in the idea that the traditional “time of year” ghettoes don’t apply anymore – look at how strong January and February have suddenly become – but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an aspect of that at play in Hellboy’s modest success), and the thing I kept returning to in my head is that the “Browncoats” are seen, by many other genre fans, as overzealous.

There’s no way to quantify that. It’s a purely speculative thing on my part, based on talking to people and visiting other internet forums. And I base it partially on the fact that nobody likes an evangelizer. Nobody wants to invite the Jehova’s Witnesses in to bullshit when they come a-knockin’. You want those people off your doorstep, and ASAP.

And further, I can tell you as a passionate Buffy and Angel fan and defender that there is a sizeable portion of the fandom that just reacts incredibly negatively to Joss and his works. I have taken a tremendous amount of guff for my unabashed love of those two shows (including lots of homophobic emails, weirdly), and it’s often from people who have never seen the programs. Hey, it happens, and fandom’s a weird place at best.

Again, it’s not the scientific method, but those are the factors that came into my opinion that the Browncoats kept the core genre audience from seeing the film this weekend. (And in fairness, someone asked me just how big that core genre audience is, and I have to admit I don’t know. I do feel like it’s bigger than 10 million dollars, though) That has nothing to do with the mainstream’s reception of the film, and that’s important to note. And it’s important to note that I don’t necessarily think there was some angry “To hell with the Browncoats!” revolt in the wider fandom. I think there may very well have just been a fatigue. After the preview screenings months ago, and the interim attention from those fans, Serenity felt like a movie that had already happened.

As for the idea that I don’t like the very concept of the Browncoats – guilty as charged! I don’t like any self-identifying pop-cultural group. I find it bizarre and troubling. Trekkies make me feel creeped out, and that was before seeing the excellent documentary about the phenomenon. I am a fan of Buffy and Angel, but I wouldn’t include myself in a fan group. I love Lost and watch it religiously, but I wouldn’t consider myself a Lostie. I don’t like to categorize myself by my musical tastes or my reading material or the sneakers I wear. The desire to be included in a group, the desire to become part of a big pop cultural movement like that – I don’t get it. And I sort of feel like it’s something Mal Reynolds would look upon with a raised eyebrow as well, but then I didn’t create the guy.

Finally, Joss worries that the Browncoats will take to heart the few sentences in my editorial that ask them to look into the mirror and ask if they helped or hurt this film in the genre audience. Do the Browncoats need this pat on the head? We’re all grown ups, more or less – does the opinion of one guy (the poorly written and barely properly spelled opinion of one guy, no less) have the ability to wound that badly? Looking at my inbox, and reading over the replies at Whedonesque, and seeing Joss’ response, I guess the answer is yes. My intention wasn’t to wound but to call attention to how marginalizing rabid fanbases can be.

Joss, thanks for the concession that I’m not a dumb guy, and I’m sorry that the big damn movie didn’t open to the numbers it deserved. You seem trapped in this place where your fans are loyal to the frightening extreme and the media loves you, but the mainstream hasn’t figured it out quite yet. I do hope they wake up, and I do hope that next week I’m writing an editorial eating every single one of these words, as Serenity’s word of mouth causes the film to buck all normal box office trends. I like a happy ending as much as the next guy, and I think this property and its creator deserve it.

This tells me that the numbers, beyond everything else, really bugged Joss.
I also liked that he came to same numbers Sam did here.

Oh to have his fax number again....


Warlock

[Hemiola]

As someone who very much admires Joss Whedon as the creator of the Buffyverse (and, along with it, the Willow/Tara 'verse;) ), I have to say that there is something slightly (a) pathetic and (b) scary about a guy as rich and famous as he is who runs around going--

"Love me, dammit, LOVE ME! WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME????"

It only goes to prove this critic's point.....

[urnofosiris]

Welcome to my life. I can’t tell you how many times I see films that are great, and that great reviews, only to have them sink upon release. The fact of the matter is that the audience isn’t looking for a good movie – God knows the continued success of Flightplan proves that.


...................


You seem trapped in this place where your fans are loyal to the frightening extreme and the media loves you, but the mainstream hasn’t figured it out quite yet. I do hope they wake up

Ah the humble opinion of a reviewer, stating his opinion as fact. He knows what a great movie is, it is just the general public that is too stoopid to get it.
I am vastly amused that even this knower of what makes a great movie and self proclaimed Joss fan is not altogether in love with this one. I am even more amused that apparently Whedon is religiously reading reviews, at least from the people he expects to sing his praises, and is upset when it is not halaluja-ing his latest product of genius. If he gets this pissy about a review that is coated in fair amounts of honey, what will his reaction be if he reads something more candid.

[sam7777]

Tim, great article! I agree that extremist fans are a royal pain in the @ss and can actually hurt their own shows. Trekkies certainly went off the deep end over the cancellation of Enterprise. But I don't think that fandom is bad per se. The fandom that takes the form of cultists who think their man is GAWD and brook no criticism or other view is what's bad IMHO. In this regard, josswad's fans have been the worst. Running around dissing all other SciFi shows to push Sereneshit can't have encouraged other SciFi fans to embrace josswad's shit. Counter productive indeed.

And further, I can tell you as a passionate Buffy and Angel fan and defender that there is a sizeable portion of the fandom that just reacts incredibly negatively to Joss and his works.

This bit really resonated with me since many of those folks are here on the Kitten. I was a W/T fan but never a Buffy or Whedon fan (frankly I never thought about josswad until the DoT). The only passionate feeling I have had for josswad was contempt for inflicting the dead lesbian cliche and the only admiration was for those who called him on it. I have personally discouraged my circle from seeing any of his works (not very hard) and as the SciFi geek in my circle, they listen to my opinion on genre stuff. I've found josswad's fandom be it for buffy or fireshit to be very negative with big portions of homophobia (remember how many hated W/T, I do) and racism (any comments about the lack of diversity on the show were beaten down). That is why the Kitten as a gay friendly and W/T friendly environ is the only board I frequent.

Sheridan, excellent point on ticket prices. $10million doesn't translate to that many people. Considering that I thought the core ME fans to be about 3million that should have translated to a box office of $19,500,000 taking your average $6.50 per ticket if they all went to see the movie. $10million means that only about 1.5million went to see the flick. Not very impressive. Serenity will drop alot next week from this piddling box office because they don't have the female skewed audience that creates smaller drops and because all genre films drop alot from their opening wknd. That's why they need big opening weekends (from IMdb):

Batman Begins (2005) dropped 43% from $48,745,440 to $27,589,389
Fantastic Four (2005) dropped 59% from $56,061,504 to $22,783,303
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) dropped 76% from $108,435,841 (long wknd) to $25,088,336

And those are this years genre successes! BTW a franchise-worthy box office is much bigger than what Sereneshit got. X-men when released in 2000 cost $75,000,000, opened with $54,471,475 and dropped 56% to $23,468,649 and grossed $157,299,717 overall. Uh any wonder why we got X-men 2 and will be getting X-men 3. OTOH Starship Troopers (1997) cost $95,000,000, opened with $22,058,773 (about 23% of it's budget like Sereneshit) and dropped 22% to $17,134,420. Even with a small drop the next weekend, ST only achieved a $54,700,065 well below it's buget and so no surprise that Starship Troopers 2 was a straight to video release. Back in 1997, audience drop off was less than now even for the flops. Truth is that Sereneshit should have been put on TV as Devin Faraci said or released straight to DVD with a much smaller budget.

Sereneshit's release did not impress the folks at the-numbers.com:
http://www.the-numbers.com/interactive/newsStory.php?newsID=1497

The mini-winning streak the box office was on came to a crashing end this weekend as the total box office was only $88 million, down 11.4% from last weekend and a stunning 21.7% from last year. Of course, this time last year was the first weekend in October, so the year-to-year drop-off is to be expected. Year-to-date, 2005 is behind 2004 by 6.6% at $6.479 billion to $6.934 billion. But at least the fall is still ahead by 7.7% at $453 million, and at this point you have to take whatever good news you can find.

Flightplan just beat expectations falling a tiny bit shy of 40% remaining in first place with $14.8 million over the weekend. The film has now had $45.9 million in ticket sales, nearly matching its production budget. If it can perform as well internationally, then it should be able to show a profit before it reaches the home market.

Serenity seemed to have a lot going for it, a rabidly loyal fanbase from the TV series, incredible reviews, and a popular feel that should have made it a big hit. However, the studio may have dropped the ball when it came to marketing the film; they relied on viral marketing and while that was able to get the base excited, but obviously wasn't t able to connect with the average moviegoer as the film could do no better than $10.1 million. If you were to look for something positive the per theatre average wasn't bad and the word-of-mouth should be excellent as earned a Cinema Score rating of A. Even so, the Fanboy Effect will likely kill this film next weekend and it will have to wait till late in its the home market run to show any kind of profit. On the other hand, the [Firefly] DVD is ranked number two on Amazon.com.

They define the fanboy effect as:
http://www.the-numbers.com/glossary.php#fanboy_effect

Fanboy Effect
Certain films have a very loyal following, usually due to their source material. These people will flock to the film as soon as it opens, either over the opening weekend or, more likely, opening night. This inflates these numbers, reducing both the Internal Multiplier and the overall Multiplier.

If the bulk of their audience has already gone to see Sereneshit, it will certainly have to wait till late in its the home market run to show any kind of profit. Since the DVD does so well maybe the next release should be straight to DVD.

[WebWarlock]

Oh. You really must read their board.
http://www2.chud.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85397

The Whedonites there (and that is a term the CHUD people use as well) are just INSANE. Wow, this gives a warm, squishy feeling inside.

ETA: even more links. This is fun.
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fan ... 11243.html and
The predictable: http://whedonesque.com/comments/8283

Warlock

[jixer]

Hello Kittens-

I'm not sure of how kosher this is but by gum, this just echoes with this Kitten. Since this is the Litterbox and it is about the most central ME writer here is a posting from the board WW cited above. The author is known there as 'Agent Helix'. If this person is of age and in Stumptown I'll buy them a microbrew of their choice. This is in response to the Whedonites going ballistic about a person who pointed out Serenity's piss-poor future was PARTLY based on the fanboy's antics.


The response to the rabid ones:

We're not talking about mainstream America being alienated. We're talking about a percentage of the already existing fanbase for genre films. People like myself, who, while not the biggest fans of Firefly, probably would've been interested in seeing Serenity simply because it's about spaceships. There is a significant contingent of people like me who were turned off by the venom spewed by lunatics like yourself and Anya, or the slavishly robotic antics of people like Woodward, or just the general air of holier-than-thou verbal acrobatics all centered around a goddamned television show. It's people like ME that Devin is referring to in that article. People that are otherwise big fans of sci-fi pictures, but felt pushed away by what they viewed as a ridiculous, rabid, and unpleasant fanbase. You're just illustrating the point again and again here, and it's tiresome. You refuse to actually read anything that anyone has said, and instead simply stick your fingers in your ears and go "LA LA LA LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING!".

The article didn't even MENTION mainstream America. It talked solely, in that ONE paragraph, about the existing genre fans' reactions to the "Browncoat Phenomenon". A lot of us are tired of the backlash we get when we dare to say even the remotest ill word towards Firefly, or towards Whedon. We're tired of watching an okay show being mystically raised to a level of near dieification. We're tired of dealing with people like you, who get so worked up over make believe people doing make believe things, that we (and I'd venture a guess that there's more of us than you think, PodBay. CHUD and AICN are far from the only websites on the internet) actively chose not to see the movie, because we no longer care, or have been so turned off by "Browncoats" that we actively DON'T want to see it.

And in this thread, you're pretty much proving the point.
__________________

Perhaps there's more people tired with Joss and his adoring mob than I'd
hoped after all.


Jixer

[urnofosiris]

As I suspected, Serenity is proving to be quite entertaining, though not in the way Whedon intended, and it does not cost anything. I could not read all of those posts, but what I saw was vastly amusing.

[Sheridan]

I think its very likely that most people who wanted to see Serenity or were willing to take a chance on it have now seen it. The article was spot on about the Browncoat effect, they created an air that this movie was really just for them and most people seem to have taken this on board. Checked out the whole CHUD thread and its the usual litany of reasons why it didn't do more business, apprarently unable to accept the basic premise that people just didn't want to go see the movie of a TV series they had never watched. Of course the other point is that this reveals how thin the fan boy numbers have become, not much more than a million now, which doesn't stack up very well against the viewing figure when Buffy was in it's heydey. JW burned his bridges with big sections of the fanbase and this is the result, he turned loyal fans into people who are cheering when his latest project fails, perhaps he might spend less time bitching about reviewers and more time thinking about that.

[urnofosiris]

They should be happy they made this many millions to lessen the losses. I am sure that Joss Whedon does not have millions of devoted fans or it would not just be that einrgggrrrr etc. throwing that hissy fit in that thread. A few million people went to see the movie and most of them probably were just people interested in the genre. If it had been any good, more people would have watched it. The market for Sci-Fi is not exactly tiny.
A good name or nostalgia will sell itself (like the lesser Star Wars trilogy). If a movie lacks that I think it will either need a big star, a great trailer or wonderful word of mouth to draw in the crowds. It does not appear Serenity has any of those things going for it.

They tried to sell it in Joss Whedon´s name, I bet most people do not know who he is, even if they are into Sci-Fi or watched Buffy (I don´t know the names of the creators of the shows I watch nowadays and I would not have known his if not for this board). If you see the rest of the trailer and look at it without prejudice, what is there to sell the movie?
A good trailer has made me watch a movie many a time (and regret it quite a few because it turned out all the good bits were the trailer, but kudos to the movie makers for making me fall for it).

This trailer is just bleh. Every little scene they show is so short it does not even get the chance to imprint itself on the brain before the next one erases the previous image. The bits they show are boring, except maybe the girl fighting in the end, that looked ok (though not original), however, the supposedly witty comments that accompanied the scene by that captain guy were just lame, so that ruined that part for me. The special effects that were shown looked ok, but were altogether too brief and unspectacular to tempt me to see more (not that I would ever be tempted, but I am pretending to look at it as I would any other movie).

The crappy trailer could be corrected by good word of mouth, but if anyone were to find themselves in the thread Tim linked, all desire to go see the movie would surely be killed most effectively and that einrgrrr person still can see no merit in how the movie failed because of it´s fans. Well clearly that is not all there is to it, but they certainly are not helping their Lord Joss.

[WebWarlock]

YET another example of the "Browncoat effect".

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfg ... n?blogid=3

Guy write an "ok" review and he get's hate mail the Whedonites/Browntounges.

Wow. When that pendulum swings, get the fuck out of the way!

Warlock

[urnofosiris]

Oh that is hysterical. Joss Whedon made his bed and look what kind of people he gets to share it with. Priceless, they deserve each other. He even stood up for them just after that mildly negative review by that Devin guy. How amusing. Seriously, can you imagine what the mails must be like for the people who wrote a bad review?

[WebWarlock]

Oh.

This is the most fun I have had since FF was cancelled.

No matter what the Whedonites do from now on they either look like pissy little whiners, insane fans with anger issues, a bunch of raincoaters sitting in their basements cranking it to downloads of kaylee (or whatever the fuck Willow 3.0's name is).

Where is Blue Pariah? He needs to be part of this!

Warlock

[sam7777]

on the Chud thread and SF gate article. The Fireshit fans are really going out of their way to alienate folks. Two things really stood out for me.

1. $5,000,000 was lost from alienated SciFi fans due to the brownshirts/coats/whatever.
This was implied by Devin and is poo pood by the cultists as not possible than for more than a few thousand. Well when I do the math and divide $5 million by an average $6.50 per ticket that translates to 769,231 tickets undersold. Considering that genre and SciFi fans in particular are disproportionally online and the internet reaches worldwide, does anyone doubt that 800k could be negativly influenced?

2. Why would anyone not watch something because of it's fan base?
This has been asked here as well. This is often dismissed as not giving something a chance or being small minded but they forget that genre shows are almost unique in having dedicated fan bases. For me and others (check out the Chud thread for examples), the fan experience IS part of the whole and if one is bad, it certainly taints the other. Never would have been an X-Files fan without fandom. I came in 4th season and would have been lost without it.

It's hilarious to see josswad defend the brownshirts/coats/whatever when he egged on fans to attack Kittens and any other fan groups that didn't cream their pants over his vision. Josswad has been and I think always will always be stuck with only a niche cult appeal and a shrinking one at that.

[urnofosiris]

Yes the magic of the internet is at work. A few more weeks from now they will all be branded forever as maniacal freaks that dwarf any other kind of fandom when it comes to being maniacal freaks. Ah I might feel more sympathy if I was not convinced they actually are maniacal freaks and that quite a few of them did their best to dismiss us all as insane militant lesbians who called their god a homophobe.

[sam7777]

I have a question for the MODs.

Has anyone tried to open a thread for Sereneshit in GMP?

Would Sereneshit count as an ME project and be OT to the main board as per the FAQ?

Cuz I'd really hate to have those brownshirts/coats/whatever on the Kitten board considering that part of the reason for the board was to get away from rabid whedon fans.

[WebWarlock]

I actually seriously doubt they can be blamed for 800k losses. BUT they do get some blame.

G. You are right, that is how they will be remembered. No one will give a fuck that they gave coats to the homelss (noble) or DVDs to the troops (something I think they should be charged with Treason. Out troops have it bad enough!), they will be remembered as the psycho fans.

Garner and I joke that FF did one really great thing.
Bab 5 fans and Star Trek fans stopped hating each other to turn their hate on Firefly!

I can't wait for the numbers this weekend! This is better than if it tanked outright. Prolongs their torture and getts them acting more psychotic.

Warlock

[helpfulinformationperhaps]

whedon certainly keeps chipping away at his fan base

the guy used to be able to draw 5 million viewers for a tv show - now he can't get more than 1.5 million to go to the movies

maybe he should reconsider the part about giving people what they need as opposed to what they want!

[Warduke]

I have a question for the MODs.

Has anyone tried to open a thread for Sereneshit in GMP?

Would Sereneshit count as an ME project and be OT to the main board as per the FAQ?

Cuz I'd really hate to have those brownshirts/coats/whatever on the Kitten board considering that part of the reason for the board was to get away from rabid whedon fans.

It's totally OT. It would be deleted on sight.

[urnofosiris]

No one has tried yet, not recently anyway, but now you´ve said it out loud I bet it is going to happen.

[sam7777]

Thanks for the confirm!!! That's what I thought. Sorry for the extra work if my mention makes it so.

Tim, agreed. I'm making the mistake of giving them too much credit but they are certainly part of the blight as can be seen from the Chud posts. For my part I would much much rather have Sereneshit and any other of josswad's shite fail outright.

Universal must certainly be sorry now to have spent $40-50million on this shit. IMHO they would have been better off as a $10-12million TV movie on the SciFi Channel or a DVD release given how almost everyone is saying that it looked like a TV movie.

ETA: Box Office Mojo has the box office derby predictions up for this weekend and it's not looking good for Sereneshit: (Note $ in millions)
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/games/

1 WALLACE AND GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT $18.5
2 IN HER SHOES $13.5
3 TWO FOR THE MONEY $10.5
4 FLIGHTPLAN $8.9
5 TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE $6.0
6 SERENITY $5.9
7 WAITING $5.5
8 A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE $5.5
9 INTO THE BLUE $3.9
10 JUST LIKE HEAVEN $3.7
11 THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED $2.9
12 THE GOSPEL $2.9

(please not that these number will change from this snapshot as the game is still going on)

Of course this is the same brain trust that thought Sereneshit would be the #1 movie last weekend with a $15million opening so take it with a big grain of salt. This predicts a 41% drop for Sereneshit, a 38% drop for Coprse Bride and a 33% drop for A History of Violence. A move from #1 to #6 is nothing to cheer about.

For my part, I think that they are off on Sereneshit which I think will actually drop 50-60%. Assuming that, it's possible that both "Waiting" and "A History of Violence" will pull ahead putting Sereneshit in the #8 pistion. I certainly agree with them that BOTH Coprse Bride and A History of Voilence will drop less than Sereneshit.

In any case, I would love to see Wallace and Gromit as the #1 movie next weekend.

[Sheridan]

The remaining Whedonites are radidly moving into the territory of the people who think the moon landing were a hoax or Elivs is still alive and working in Burger King; no matter what evidence comes along to refute their view that Joss Whedon is a genius and his shows/movies are being unjustly discriminated against. Anyone who pojts out the flaws in their theory is obviously in on the plot and has to betreated accordingly. Oh and if the 'Browncoats' wonder what it is about them is so off putting they might star by considering that name with its ugly connotation of 'Brownshirts'

[jixer]

Hello Kittens-

Given the state of European History knowledge in the U.S. I have an uncomfortable feeling a lot of browncoats wonder why people shudder. I'm a history geek so the closeness to the SA made me question 'browncoats' when I heard about it. I guess 'butter-nut' would have been ripping off the Civil War theme too literally.


Jixer

[sam7777]

I expect the Brownshirts will have more to scream about this Monday. Box Office Guru is predicting a 50% drop:

Universal captured a large share of Serenity's total audience last weekend as fans rushed out to see the sci-fi adventure. Although reviews and word-of-mouth are favorable, a hefty drop is still likely as midweek numbers have not been holding up very well. A 50% drop to around $5M could result giving Serenity a ten-day tally of $18M.

[Garner]

I am with Jixer on this...how the hell did they get the name Browncoats? Who gave them this name? Did they come up with it themselves and does anyone know why they got this name? It has such close connotations to the SA that I wondered if this wasn't something someone gave them to belittle them and make people ignore them? A derogative nickname as it were.

As for Serenity, it has gotten some good word of mouth here unfortunately. Those who have seen it seem to have liked it and I see a number of SF fans in the comic/game shop who aren't on the internet or who havn't heard a thing about it from the net. The up side is I think that all those who wanted to see it already have, good word of mouth or not. And that hopefully means a big drop this weekend. Hopefully.

I do find it sad that Josswad has declined so far that he is down to only a million or so fans for FF. But then a lot of people didn't like BtVS and having his name associated to Serenity could have hurt as much as helped. And I don't mean those he alienated, but those who disliked Buffy from the start. It would make breaking into the mainstream a lot harder, than say Hellboy.

Being an evil vindictive kitten, I am just hoping for more and greater failure from Josswad.

Garner

[urnofosiris]

I feel dirty now, I got this from the official browncoat fansite:

In Serenity, Browncoats are Independent Faction soldiers, a body opposed to the AngloSino Alliance in the Unification War. Defeated at Serenity Valley on Hera in 2511, Browncoats are forced to live as galactic outcasts.

That means the name started with Joss who decided to name the good guys in his show after nazis, unwittingly no doubt, but that is no excuse.

Edit: On second thought, I wonder how unwitting he could have been, that little summary sounds not unlike a group fighting the nazis who tried to "unify" Europe. Maybe mister Whedon thought it would be ironic or funny to nickname his heros after nazis. We know what a warped sense of humor he has. Has anyone ever pointed out this particular similarity to his loyal soldiers btw? I would be most interested to read the reaction if anyone has done so. Given the sentiments they express after a good review, this should surely have interesting results.