That sounds really smart to me. Really smart. 'Course, I could be wrong.

pat32082 | October 12, 16:18 CET

Great idea, yeah.

But: the movie is in german, and the pilot in english? That's pretty odd. People'll be listening to one set of voices for the pilot, and then another set of voices for the movie?

Sounds to me like a fan-affair anyway, so why not just play the english version of the movie? Or would that pose problems as well. Do english versions usually have subtitles in Germany?

GVH | October 12, 16:22 CET

no, usually everything in Germany is dubbed. Very, very seldom you get an opportunity to hear the real voices and then always with undertitles. But I guess they didn't make the undertitles yet....

There is a Joss message in between the two serenitys, a little break if you will. And I must say, that the voices are pretty well fitting the characters, so it's not too odd. odd, yes but not so much to put me of attending... :)

Harpy | October 12, 17:00 CET

Heh, I can't even imagine going to see a dubbed version of anything other than a children's movie or possibly an anime, and even that only if there truly is no other way to avoid it. I'm very happy we don't dub here in the Netherlands.

But as long as you guys don't mind, I guess it's fine :-)

GVH | October 12, 17:16 CET

I do mind, however nobody asks me. But to contradict Harpy here - in my experience there is a theatre showing the OV in every larger city.
Most of the showings are pretty close to the general release already, so I guess I'll save the money and effort to go there, wait 2 or 3 more weeks and see it a few times then.

Ariane | October 12, 17:26 CET

I wonder if UIP have advertised to the Perry Rhodan fan club. I remember being amazed at how popular this series of SF books was in Germany. The link says there are more than 3,000 novels now.

Anyone looking forward to the next 2,999 Serenity novels ?

technovamp | October 12, 17:31 CET

There's a lot to say about clever marketing...it would have been nice to see Hollywood take advantage of at least some of the orignal source material. It was a waste to ignore Firefly in marketing Serenity.

I'm a comic book person....

The average comic book in the United States has about a 50,000 copy print run per month. There are some with more and some with less but thats a pretty safe average. In Germany, at the end of the very popular TV show, The Simpsons, they run a commercial for The Simpsons Comic book. They have a print run for that comic in Germany of about 350,000 copies per month.

Like I said, there's a lot to be said about clever (or maybe obvious) marketing.

--alexreager

alexreager | October 12, 17:44 CET

alexreager, we don't sign our posts here at Whedonesque. Your name at the bottom of your comment does that for you.

I like the idea of selling Serenity this way, it's certainly different.

Simon | October 12, 17:47 CET

@Ariane, sorry to contradict you right back, but not every movie is shown in the original, not even in the big cities. English films stand a better chance, but Hollywood movies don't, in my experience (Coming from Essen, 6th biggest german city.) According to info of one of the german board it seems to depend on the distribution company (NOT the studio or the theatre). one of them (naming no names) which obviously doesn't hold with OVs is responsible for Serenity as far as I know (But haven't checked it lately, so could be mistaken). All I know is that fans have made inquiries into the Serenity showing in OV showing in major cities, and so far it doesn't look good.

Harpy | October 12, 17:48 CET

Oh Man! Why doesn't UIP do this in Australia? This would be awsome!

Zoic_Fan | October 12, 18:00 CET

Talking about promotions and good ideas, according to the site I have linked to below, when Fox releases the Firefly DVD set in Germany on 3rd November:

“Fox is starting a cross-promotion with UIP: anybody who buys the DVD set and also attends the movie, receives a discount of 5 Euros”

The link is here (it is in German).

Bloody hell! Why is this just happening in Germany?

Nb I presume the Firefly DVD set they are releasing on 3rd Nov is a German version?

miranda | October 12, 19:04 CET

GVH: "Sounds to me like a fan-affair anyway, so why not just play the english version of the movie?"

Good point! I think they should've let us watch it in english. Maybe they don't want the fans to be able to compare too early. They fear our pointing out mistakes in translation ;)

[ edited by PowerToThePeople on 2005-10-12 18:59 ]

Udo Schmitz | October 12, 19:43 CET

The cross-promotion thing is great. We tried to contact Fox here in the Netherlands to see if they wanted to do anything like that with UIP Netherlands, but they aren't even releasing the DVD set here (yay for imports), so that was bound to fail ;-).

Could've been a great idea in the US as well, though.

GVH | October 12, 21:02 CET

@Harpy:
All I know that there is an indie theatre in Stuttgart (where I live) which so far has screened not only indie films but also most of the major ones in OV, e. g. LOTR, Star Wars etc, basically almost everything that I wanted to see. But now that you brought it up, I'll email them and ask.

Ariane | October 12, 21:07 CET

Sounds good, but I don't want to see the movie in German. I'm not really a Firefly fan, but if the movie was in English I'd give it a try. So I'll just have to wait for the official release. In Munich there two or three theatres that show OVs of Hollywood films.
@miranda: A German DVD version usually also includes an English track.

Elo | October 13, 14:36 CET