A few weeks back, Firefly star Nathan Fillion (he'll always be Captain Hammer to us; Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog forever!), joked that he would love to buy back the rights to the long-canceled Joss Whedon show if he won the lottery with the goal of getting it back on the air. Naturally, some hardcore fans (Browncoats, as the Firefly faithful are called) took this to mean that they should raise the money themselves -- some $300 million -- and give it to Fillion to work his magic. As it turns out, however, Camp Whedon wasn't fully on-board with this scheme.
"Guys, no one in the Whedonverse is in support of www.helpnathanbuyfirefly.com," Whedon's sister-in-law and co-producer Maurissa Tancharoen wrote on Twitter. "Please save your money!"
This made some of the Firefly faithful a bit upset, something which caused Tancharoen to slowly back away from the Internet. "This is a pure fan movement," she wrote on Twitter. "There just needed to be clarification. There were many questions coming my way so I finally answered. I wasn’t trying to bash dreams, by all means come together and show your love for Firefly. But when money is involved (and pledges are meant to become real $ at some point, yes?) things get tricky. I wasn’t going to say anything else on the subject as I didn’t want to further fuel the already out of control fire, but unkind things have been said. And honestly, I’m afraid that I’ve grown afraid of the internet. Still got mad love for the Browncoats. Over and out for a bit."
And so ends the tale of that time when the Internet tried to raise money to bring back a dead television show. Somewhere, the Veronica Mars fan base is breathing a sigh of relief that they didn't try this first.
