Why?

Well, I was watching a film on BBC1 (UK) the other day and I was shocked to see who wrote it. So I decided to check out exactly what Joss had penned on IMDB and it's been a lot!

I mean lets ignore the obvious, I think everybody knows he wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and his ill fated sci-fi series Firefly.

Some of you might already know he wrote the screenplay for Alien: Resurrection (1997). The one where Ripley is knocked back up out of her component DNA and Brad Dourif plays yet another creepy character. Wouldn't you just love this poor guy to get a 'nice' role once in a while.

But did you know he co-wrote the screen play for Pixar's 1997 hit film Toy Story?

It seems to start a trend in 2000 when he co-wrote the screenplay for the less than successful, but actually not that bad, Sci-Fi Epic animation Titan A.E. It cost $75 million and made $50 million at best. Ouch. Plus you've got to realise that promotion ISN'T included in the cost of production. So it's actually more like a 50% loss, not at 25%.

I say trend because next up was Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire(2001) for which he did the original treatment. But hey, Disney messed that up. Not him.

Thankfully during this time Buffy was a monster hit (pun intended).

But after Firefly bombing, Angel sinking into oblivion and Serenity not performing quite as well at the box office and his recent departure as the writer/director for the up and coming Wonder Woman movie. It's not looking good. But if you know one thing about the movie industry, it's this. Pockets are deep and memories are short. Serenity, it should be noted, was a top selling DVD (partly because of the Firefly/Serenity fan base) and it fell short of its budget (in the US at least) by just $2 million dollars. Which can be made up in the takings from the UK. So it didn't LOOSE money (as some would say) because the take on DVD sales would have paid off the promotion costs.

But did it TAKE money? That's the interesting question.

And if so, and considering Joss now has time on his hands.... can we expect Serenity 2?

I, for one, can only hope so.