JOSS WHEDON
WRITER/DIRECTOR

JOSS WHEDON (Writer / Director) received an Oscar® nomination as co-writer of the record-breaking hit Toy Story. He is also the Emmy-nominated creator of the television sensations Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, as well as Firefly, on which his feature film directorial debut, Serenity, is based.

Buffy earned Whedon the SFX Millennium Readers Award for creating “The Best Show of All Time.” Through all his success on television and in film, Whedon has also kept his hand in the comic book industry, creating Fray for Dark Horse Comics. He is currently writing Astonishing X-Men, a new extension of the singularly successful “X-Men” series.

A graduate of Wesleyan University in film studies, Joss began his television writing career as a staff writer on the ABC comedy series Roseanne before becoming a producer on the sitcom Parenthood. In addition to Toy Story, his feature film writing credits include Alien: Resurrection and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He has also contributed (uncredited) to X-Men, Speed and Twister.

The son of TV-writer Tom Whedon (The Dick Cavett Show, Benson, Alice) and grandson of TV-writer John Whedon (The Donna Reed Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show), the third-generation Whedon expanded his range of talents to include music: he composed the music and wrote the lyrics for the musical Buffy episode “Once More, With Feeling,” which he also directed. The CD of original songs from that landmark episode has sold more than 400,000 units worldwide.

Whedon resides in Los Angeles with his family.

A MESSAGE FROM JOSS:

Hi I’m Joss Whedon. Before we begin this special screening, I have a little story I want to tell you. It’s about a TV show called Firefly. Firefly went on the air a few years ago and was instantly hailed by critics as one of the most cancelled shows of the year. It was ignored and abandoned, and the story should end there. But it doesn’t, because the people who made the show and the people who saw the show—which is roughly the same number of people—fell in love with it a little bit too much to let it go, too much to lay down arms when the battle looked pretty much lost.

In Hollywood, people like that are called unrealistic, quixotic, obsessive. In my world, they’re called Browncoats. Now whether you watched the show on TV or saw the DVDs—or whether you never set foot in the Firefly universe before tonight—the fact that you’re here means that you’re part of something, something that is a little bit remarkable. This movie should not exist. Failed TV shows don’t get made into major motion pictures—unless the creator, the cast and the fans believe beyond reason. That’s what I have felt, and that’s what I have seen in the DVD sales, the booths at the cons run by fans, the web sites and the fundraisers—all the work the fans have done helped make this movie.

It is, in an unprecedented sense, your movie. Which means…if it sucks, it’s your fault. You blew it. You let us down. But let’s not dwell on your failures, because the work is not done. I have to finish making it. This is not quite a final cut, and you’ll notice some placeholders in music and FX. But we are very close, and once we are finished…you have to get people to see it.

Now obviously the studio will do its thing. There will be ads and trailers and all that joy, but this movie does not have stars. It doesn’t have a giant mega budget. It doesn’t even have a simple saleable premise. What it has is us—the people who believed unreasonably. If this movie matters to you, let somebody know. Let everybody know. Make yourselves heard.

If you don’t like the movie…this is a time for quiet, for months of silent contemplation. But when the unfinished credits roll—if you still call yourself a Browncoat—remember the millions of people who don’t…who might. I want us to do this together. The cast will be appearing wherever they can. I will be blogging and stumping and whatever I can think of. We have CantStoptheSignal.com up and running.

I’m fairly certain we’re all doing everything we can to make this the event it should be. Because
remember: they tried to kill us. They did kill us, and here we are. We have done the impossible, and that makes us mighty. Thank you for helping getting this movie as far as it has gotten. Welcome to Serenity.