(Meta) Some background information

[stormwreath]

Some of you may already have seen a big interview that Scott Allie of Dark Horse Comics gave to Ain't It Cool News recently... but if you haven't, he gave the clearest statement I've ever seen about the copyright and licencing situation regarding 'Buffy' and Joss's other creative works. I thought it might be interesting to repeat it here:

SCOTT:

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[stormwreath]

As I understand it, Fox cancelled 'Firefly' and weren't interested in any sort of continuation of it. Joss was looking for some way to keep going, and rang a friend who had a movie deal with Universal. That friend mentioned it to a Universal executive (Mary Parent) who sat down and watched 'Firefly', decided it was good, and agreed to make the film - so Universal bought the movie rights from Fox.

I do know that the 'Serenity' role-playing game doesn't mention any exclusively 'Firefly' characters directly, although it does have very thinly-disguised versions of them. I assume that the Dark Horse comics pushed the boundary a bit more, because Joss was directly involved and so they knew Fox wouldn't create a fuss.

Part of the interview I didn't quote is that Debbie Olshan at Fox has said that technically, they do have the right to licence another company to publish a 'Firefly' comic in direct competition with Dark Horse's 'Serenity' comic. But they don't, because that would seem petty, would probably annoy Joss, and would confuse and anger the fans.

(But contrast the Terminator franchise, where there acutally are several different comic licences out there, for each version of the films...)