Yeah, cause his first outting for FOX went sooooo well.

*rolls eyes*

Ignore me. I'm still bitter.

wren | April 15, 23:31 CET

Well, 20th Television and and Fox aren't the same thing, so I don't see why he wouldn't work for the studio.

kungfutse | April 15, 23:45 CET

Wren, I'm of your mind. WHY is he going with anything remotely affiliated to the idiots that canned his first series?

cubiclesatan | April 16, 00:10 CET

There an easy answer to that.... $$$

tvmoobunny | April 16, 00:29 CET

Yeah, it's the Fox network that should make anybody wary, not TCF studios.

KernelM | April 16, 00:33 CET

Firstly, hi everyone, this being my first post at Whedonesque i thought i had better be polite and introduce myself.

Now getting back to the subject, kungfutse is correct, Fox the network and 20th Century the studio really are independent of each other and so Fuller would be a fool to pass up this opportunity. The only person who would lose out by him refusing is Fuller himself because it seems like a fairly sweet deal to me.

it's kinda like stopping watching Roadrunner cartoons because the WB network are responsible for cancelling the greatest show on television at the moment. The only person who would suffer is you.

No more Roadrunner!?!? Nightmare! hehe

RockManic | April 16, 00:38 CET

I think what wren was saying was that it's weird that 20th would offer him a deal right after his last show was a commercial failure. I'm sure she knows the difference between FOX and 20th. (I read her comment the other way the first time too, then went 'huh?,' and then went 'oh.')

[ edited by Invisible Green on 2004-04-15 22:48 ]

Invisible Green | April 16, 00:46 CET

However, you tend to get more then once chance if you have already produced/written a hit or for a hit. So it doesn't surprise me. JW's Firefly didn't make it either. However, after Buffy and Angel, if he decides to pitch another series...something tells me he won't have much of an issue getting it on the air somewhere.

DarenG | April 16, 00:53 CET

Any idea what the existing show is??

fate's bitch | April 16, 01:28 CET

Ok, there are pros and cons to being under contract with 20th Century Fox. Joss, for instance, has an exclusive contract with them. He can't just go off and create a teevee show for HBO if he wants to. 20th Century Fox gets the rights to everything he does teevee wise; I'm not sure about movies, but there's probably a clause about that too.

Being under contract to 20th Century Fox also means that the FOX network has first dibs on everything you create. Sure, if they don't want it on FOX they can try and sell it to another network.....until said network gets tired of paying FOX's high asking price and cancels the show (uh, Angel).

Which means that anything Fuller creates in the next 2 years will air on FOX or be sold by FOX to another network. No more cutting-edge dramas for Showtime. No more cutting-edge anything, really.

The benefit to this is that he's making hella ca$$$$ - probably 7 figures. The downside is that anything he makes in the next couple of years will be just so much fodder for the sick, sad televsion machine. If he's smart, he'll save any really good ideas he has for 2 years from now, and churn out some tepid pablum in the meantime.

yeah, still bitter....

wren | April 16, 01:51 CET

Well, probably the best explanation of why people (both the talented and untalented) who participate in "failure after failure" still stay in the Hollywood business and actually do quite well are William Goldman's two nonfiction books on the movie industry from a scriptwriter's POV. Though the earlier book is quite dated, it's still such an interesting picture of why people who never have a hit still get rich there. It's unbelievable.

His books, though centered on the movie industry, are still interesting in that the rules similarly apply to television: a bunch of executives and creative types who have absolutely no idea what the public wants. Everything they put out is a gamble, and the flukey successes foot the financial bill for everything (90%) that "fails".

So all you need to do to stay employed there is have someone with the power to hire you believe that the next thing you do will be the success. :)

Xieanthe | April 16, 03:21 CET

So, Bryan Fuller has signed a deal with 20th Century. Uh -right. "I'm paralyzed by not caring."

whirligig | April 16, 03:29 CET

whirligig - ...then why'd you read the article or bother to comment?

Invisible Green | April 16, 04:07 CET

So they like his fresh ideas, but they cancelled wonderfalls.
As Dr. Evil would say: "Riiiiighhhhhtt.........."

jay_why | April 16, 09:12 CET

The deal with Fox has got to be better than the MGM/UA deal where they let him write and develop his baby (Dead Like Me) and then fired him off of it and handed it to someone else by episode 3.

kli | June 02, 03:32 CET