Do I have a Grinch-like, horrible, evil grin on my face?
Serenity, the movie based on Firefly, Joss Whedon’s flopped TV series, has had its release date delayed five months, from April 22 to September 30. The spin is that this is to move it away from “a lot of titles aimed at a similar demographic” being released in April (not least among them the new Star Wars, I’m led to understand).
That’s not an unreasonable point–one of the keys to the Firefly movie’s possible success is making sure the film doesn’t get buried beneath a handful of other releases.
But a look at the data for other films released on September 30 is not very encouraging.
It looks to me like they’ve recognized Serenity for what it is; a movie with a built-in, but small audience. Release it in a quiet time period, hope it gets an opening weekend, and rush it onto DVD.
Personally, I am skeptical of the film’s (and Whedon’s) ability to gain an audience larger than that leftover from the series. I think the failures–speaking strictly in ratings terms–of Firefly and Buffy S7 established a ceiling on that.
