Anniversary Salute: Serenity Celebrates 15 Years

The box office movie Serenity, based on the fan favorite, uber-popular, but short-lived FOX drama Firefly, was released in theatres on September 30, 2005, meaning it will celebrate its 15th (yes, 15!) anniversary at the end of this month.

As fans all over the world of that franchise know, the American space Western was written and directed by Joss Whedon, who also created the original series that debuted back in 2002, and which consisted of only 13 episodes – not all of which actually made it to the air during its limited run on the network.

The movie – just like the series – was set in the 26th Century, telling the story of the crew of Serenity, a “Firefly-class” spaceship. In that universe, humanity colonized a new solar system with the central planets forming the Alliance, a corporate super-government that fought a war – the Unification War – against the outer planets “independents” (known as Browncoats).

Two of those independents were Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion from Castle and The Rookie) and Zoe Alleyne (Gina Torres from Suits and Pearson). After the war, Mal and Zoe became smugglers and cargo-runners, and they hired a pilot Hoban “Wash” Washburne (Alan Tudyk from Con Man and the box office movies I, Robot and Rogue One) – who Zoe ended up marrying – and a mechanic Kaylee Frye (Jewel Staite from Stargate: Atlantis and The Magicians) as well as taking on several passengers Shepherd Derrial Book (the late, great Ron Glass of Barney Miller fame) and registered Companion Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin from Homeland and Gotham).

But it was because of their most recent passengers – Dr. Simon Tam (Sean Maher, the voice of Dick Greyson/Nightwing in the Teen Titans franchise) and his sister River (Summer Glau from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Arrow) – who created even more problems for the ragtag team. In fact because of the training and conditioning performed on River by Alliance scientists (turning her into a psychic) – Simon rescued her from those scientists, setting them on an ongoing escape from them throughout the series – an assassin, known only as The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who went on to star in Kinky Boots, 12 Years a Slave, Doctor Strange and The Old Guard) was sent by the Alliance to retrieve her in the movie, leading The Operative directly to Captain Mal Reynolds and the crew of the Serenity.

The cast of the movie also included David Krumholtz (who went on to star in Numb3rs) as Mr. Universe and Sarah Paulson (the American Horror Story franchise and Mrs. America) as Dr. Caron.

The movie was filmed over a period of 50 days between June and September 2004, primarily shooting on the Universal Studio sound stages and locations throughout Los Angeles, including the Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona, California [this location served as the planet Miranda, which played a significant part in the film].

There was high anticipation for the film, unfortunately Serenity performed poorly at the box office, taking in $10.1 million on its first weekend. It did spend two weeks in the top 10 and closed on November 17, 2005 with a domestic box office gross of only $25.5 million. Sadly, the movie’s international box office results were mixed, with strong openings in the UK, Portugal and Russia, but poor results in Spain, Australia, France and Italy. The worldwide box office total was a meager $40.4 million.

Despite the lackluster box office results, Serenity did win several awards: the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation—Long Form; the Nebula Award for Best Script and the Prometheus Special Award.

One very interesting piece of trivia about the movie is that NASA astronaut Steven Swanson, an ardent fan of the series, took the Region 1 Firefly and Serenity DVDs with him on Space Shuttle Atlantis’ STS-117 mission in 2007. Those DVDs will permanently reside on the International Space Station as entertainment for the station’s crews.

Starting in January 2006, fans began organizing charity screenings of the movie to benefit Equality Now, a human rights organization supported by Joss Whedon. By mid-June of that year, 41 screenings had been confirmed for cities in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Since then there have been countless other such events held in various countries.

The franchise didn’t end there, though, as a 3-issue comic book mini-series intended to bridge the gap between the television series and the film, entitled Serenity: Those Left Behind, was released from July through September 2005 by Dark Horse Comics. After that other comics of the series were also published. In addition, a novelization of the film was written by Keith DeCandido and published by Simon & Schuster.

Serenity, just like the series it was based on, has become a cult favorite; and while the film didn’t lead to sequels – as had been the hope of die-hard fans – it has lived on in the hearts of the worldwide fandom, it has benefited worthy organizations from the countless charity screenings have been held all over the world and it celebrates it’s 15th Anniversary this year.

Happy Anniversary Serenity!

The following isn’t the official trailer for Serenity, but it’s pretty terrific: