Browncoats have held out hope that their beloved ‘Firefly’ would make a comeback somehow since Fox prematurely cancelled the fan favorite series. Sure, we got the major motion picture ‘Serenity’ and that story is being continued in the pages of Dark Horse Comics’ ‘Serenity: Leaved on the Wind’, but they’re really clamoring for a return to television. While creator Joss Whedon and star Nathan Fillion have previously taken the realistic approach and stated that chances of a revival are slim to none, executive producer Tim Minear has a slightly more hopeful approach.
After the crew of Serenity flew off into the verse, writer and producer Minear has kept quite busy around Hollywood. He reteamed with Whedon for ‘Dollhouse’ and worked on a few other shows before landing at Ryan Murphy’s side on ‘American Horror Story’. But the conversation went back around to the ragtag crew of Captain Mal Reynolds’ ship when Entertainment Weekly asked him about ‘Firefly’ potentially making a comeback. Though certain to say that no plans were in motion to make this happen, Minear suggested that the limited series format might be the best way for it to happen if it ever did get the green light:
“I think a limited series of some kind would work best. Something like that could also work if, say, 20th could partner with Netflix, or another distributor. It would have its home on Fox, of course [then a second window on streaming]. A limited series would do very well, I bet.”
Considering his day job at the moment, it’s not surprising that Minear would suggest a limited series. ‘American Horror Story’ has been quite successful in reinventing itself every season and Fox shows like ‘24’ and ‘Arrested Development’ have found new life by changing up their format, so why not consider it for ‘Firefly’? Of course, the cast is mostly tied up in other projects at the moment and Joss Whedon is shaping the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so it would be hard to make this happen right now, but if talks ever start to happen, this might be the best way to approach it.
What do you think about ‘Firefly’ returning as a special limited series? Do you think that it could realistically happen with the stars like Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Gina Torres, and Morena Baccarin constantly working on other projects? And if it did happen, wouldn’t you agree that it would be awesome to set this limited series between the original show and the movie so that we’d have Wash and Shepherd Book back in the cast? Share your thoughts and theories in the comment section.
