Today's Variety reports that Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel, has just signed a deal with the Fox network for 13 episodes of Firefly, a new science fiction series conceived by Whedon.  Whedon, who written several comics for Dark Horse (see 'Dark Horse Flogs Fray') in addition to his considerable amount of television writing, will write, executive produce and direct a two-hour premier episode.  The series is set to run in the fall of 2002, and it will provide a science fiction 'tentpole' for the Fox Network, which is still unsure if the X-Files will return next fall.  Variety estimates that Fox will pay a premium $1.3 million per episode licensing fee for the series, which will be produced by Twentieth Century Fox television and Whedon's Mutant Enemy Productions.

 

Set some 500 years in the future, Firefly gets its name from a space ship with a luminous aft section and its inspiration from Whedon's readings in the history of the American Civil War and its aftermath.  The story concerns someone who fought on the losing side of a major conflict and 'doesn't like anybody anymore.'  Whedon noted, 'This show isn't about the people who made history; it's about the people history stepped on.  It's about their lives and their struggles to keep their ship alive -- as well as the search for meaning in a very dark place.'  Whedon told Variety that the moral of this new series would be the same as his other series: 'Life is hard.  People are good when they want to be.  And the universe is a big scary place just like high school.'

 

Whedon also told Variety that Firefly would be 'a sort of anti-Star Trek, with no regular aliens or other monstrous creatures.  There'll be scary-ass humans. I can make people that are scarier than anything you can put in latex.'  If Firefly is a success next year, its science fiction premise and major network backing could eventually make it an even more important property to pop culture retailers than Buffy is now.