Has there been a petition with a commitment to go see the Serenity sequel if made, thus improving box office numbers? With the number of Firefly fans accumulated over the past several years im sure there can be hundreds of thousands that would sign.

Butler | May 12, 11:40 CET

Signed. ;)

Fred_Sonja | May 12, 13:14 CET

With the money that goes into pilots, I've never understood why they aren't made available via iTunes or online, to recoup a small amount of that money. Plus if anything gets a lot of attention, the network could rethink their decision on whether to create a series based on that pilot.

Matt_Fabb | May 12, 14:07 CET

I think The WB sold the Aquaman pilot on iTunes. Not sure if any other pilots got the same treatment. I'd like to see HBO go down the same road, figure a fair number of people would be interested.

Simon | May 12, 14:14 CET

I have to agree with Matt. You'd think it was a win-win scenario for pilots that aren't getting picked up. Craig Engler (@syfy) has mentioned that petitions aren't really considered important anymore. I signed anyway though....hoping... wishing...

shiner | May 12, 14:48 CET

"Nobody's Watching" comes to mind... After the pilot became a youtube-hit, NBC picked up the show for a couple of online-episodes.

roadi | May 12, 16:11 CET

I remember seeing Eliza's pilot "Nurses" on YouTube. It got out there somehow :)

chazman | May 12, 18:18 CET

For "win-win", you're forgetting that its probably a win-win for fans and companies, but not necessarily the people running those companies.

No executive wants to see a pilot that they passed on catch on like wildfire. It makes them look very, very bad. If it happens enough times, it's simply an excuse to fire someone even if they are (on the whole) good at their job. It's like the use of the internet for pesonal reasons at the office. Do most bosses care? No. But will they use it as an excuse to fire you because they may not like you but can't "prove" anything worse? I think most people have seen this done.

Here, same issue. Most executives realize that some shows will find an audience even if best guesses would pick against it. BUT, if you don't like an executive, you now have ammo to use against even if most people within the industry would consider it suspect.

My response as an owner would be "get over it." Still, I don't think this will ever happen. And if it does, it probably won't have the results we would like.

[ edited by azzers on 2010-05-13 04:32 ]

azzers | May 12, 19:30 CET

I still wanna see the Morena Baccarin/Jason Ritter series Still Life. Not just a pilot, I think there were like 9 episodes made of it, but Fox never aired them. It was a Spring show, then a mid-season replacement January show, and then it just fell off the radar entirely/contracts expired or something.

It might've sucked, but at the time, I was still Firefly-obsessed/watch-anything-the-cast-members-do, so was annoyed that the episodes were unreachable (guessing they've made their way online, since ?).

Kris | May 12, 21:25 CET

I too would love to see the Pilot of Wonderful Maladys. But there's no way it will happen.

I believe the main reason pilots that aren't picked up to series aren't released to the public has to do with copyrights and intellectual property.

The commissioned and filmed pilots belong to the network, and even if they don't pick up the show this season, they basically own the rights to order more episodes and produce it at any time in the future, if they choose to do so.

If a pilot like "Wonderful Maladys" is leaked (or legally released), it damages the show's profit potential (for the network and interested advertisers), and invokes a ton of complicated legal issues regarding residuals to writers, actors, etc, for a show that wasn't even picked up.

It's not uncommon for pilots that are ordered but not picked up to series to get series orders later on. Veronica Mars and Till Death are examples of shows that were passed on to go to series initially, but later were picked up by the network.

Basically, if this petition somehow works, and we're given the opportunity to view the pilot episode now, the chances of the show ever being picked up decrease dramatically. I'm still interested in seeing the Wonderful Maladys pilot, but from working in the television industry I've learned there is usually a good reason why a show doesn't get picked up to series, and Wonderful Maladys may disappoint.

glorificus314 | May 12, 21:27 CET

Glorificus , I think a lot of fans accept the fact that it may be bad .It definitely seems to be the reason that people attribute to it's non pick up whenever it's mentioned on message boards .

It's the simplest explanation to understand why HBO turned it down .

But as a fan you're willing to take the occasional bad with the good .

garda39 | May 12, 22:03 CET

Let's remember though that networks aren't infallible--not even HBO. They passed on Mad Men, didn't they? It could just be that Maladys wasn't a good fit for them for whatever reason. Here's hoping Sarah tries the TV route again, as I'm convinced it's what her career needs right now.

Hellmouthguy | May 13, 05:10 CET