What next for Joss Whedon?

[DigificWriter]

Like I said, somebody pulled that "Spike in Firefly" idea out of their ass.

James Marsters would have appeared in the series, along with Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof, but "as part of a traveling Shakespare troupe".

 

[Ethros]

Firefly was set around 2500. Going by lore of the Buffyverse, vampires who live that long become far more demonic looking, and are permanently in vamp face. Like The Master, and Kakistos, who was the oldest vampire on record and had cloven hooves in place of hands and feets. So Spike should probably have looked like that by then.

But yes as other say it's a load of claptrap. Unless someone said it at a convention as a joke or something.

 

[gblews]

Count me among those who are down with just about anything he wants to do. I follow him on Twitter and his sense of humoor is as sharp as it has always been.

I didn't know about the divorce. I wish all parties a speedy recovery.

 

[Tosk]

vampires who live that long become far more demonic looking, and are permanently in vamp face. Like The Master, and Kakistos, who was the oldest vampire on record and had cloven hooves in place of hands and feets. So Spike should probably have looked like that by then.

Maybe those dudes always looked like that?

And personally, I couldn't care less about his personal life. That's his business. Just keep making good stuff and I'll be happy.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Count me as a fan who doesn't care about his personal life. If I was to only watch movies & TV made by and starring complete moral paragons, I probably wouldn't watch anything at all. (That said, I do pray for healing for all involved. It sounds very painful.)

As far as the status of Batgirl, it sure seems like it's been a while since we've heard anything about it. I kinda wonder if maybe the story about Joss Whedon directing Batgirl, while being considered, was being used more as a blind to conceal that the real reason why Warner Bros. brought him in from the beginning was to re-tool Justice League behind Zack Snyder's back.

Certainly the last rumors I read about didn't mention Batgirl at all on DC's upcoming slate. As far as what we ARE getting, we already know that Aquaman is in post-production and that they've just started production on Shazam! It sounds like Suicide Squad 2 is next up and I'm sure that they're fast-tracking Wonder Woman 2. After that, I hear that they want to do Flashpoint and then the new Batman movie, possibly followed by Nightwing and a new Man of Steel sequel.

https://movieweb.com/new-dc-films-slate-2018-dceu-movies-warner-bros/
https://revengeofthefans.com/2018/0...how-dc-is-going-to-control-the-narrative/amp/

Frankly, while I love quippy Joss Whedon, I don't know that he's such a good fit for DC, particularly for anything in the Bat-family, which I think works best while being darker and more grounded. Although, the project that Joss said he was working on after he left Marvel but before he got attached to DC sounded kinda dark-ish: a WWII zombie movie.

Personally, I don't think I'll ever find anything else that I love quite as much as the Buffyverse. And while I accept that the cast has mostly gotten too old to keep going as they were in live-action, I would love to see Whedon use his post-Avengers clout to make a big-budget live-action Fray movie. I figure it's a way to stay in the Buffyverse while giving us something new and something that couldn't really be done properly on a TV budget.

Firefly was set around 2500. Going by lore of the Buffyverse, vampires who live that long become far more demonic looking, and are permanently in vamp face. Like The Master, and Kakistos, who was the oldest vampire on record and had cloven hooves in place of hands and feets. So Spike should probably have looked like that by then.

2500 A.D. would make Spike about 650 years old. Darla was about 400 years old and still looked perfectly human. I was under the impression that the Master & Kakistos were both substantially older than that, probably well over 1000. Probably over 2000 in the case of Kakistos. But then, it's hard to know how old vampires are since a lot of them seem to lie about their age to seem older and more powerful than they really are. As Spike said in "School Hard": "If every vampire who said he was at the crucifixion was actually there, it would've been like Woodstock."

Furthermore, in the realm of in-universe speculation, perhaps even if normal vampires could start to get more demonic-looking around the 6-century mark, perhaps Spike would not since he now has a soul.

 

[Qonundrum]

Another movie or show where a little girl routinely beats the hell out of grown men.

I'd say, dig up some old episodes of "Blake's 7" (1978-81) and watch Jenna, Cally and/or Dayna beat the hell out of grown men. Especially Bayban the Butcher!

 

[Starbreaker]

$656 million! It's a flop!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Firefly was set around 2500. Going by lore of the Buffyverse, vampires who live that long become far more demonic looking, and are permanently in vamp face. Like The Master, and Kakistos, who was the oldest vampire on record and had cloven hooves in place of hands and feets. So Spike should probably have looked like that by then.

Not if the demon face is tied to how much murdering you do. We have no canon reason to think that but if they said that nobody would question it. Besides, Darla is 500+ and doesn’t have demon face.

 

[Ethros]

Besides, Darla is 500+ and doesn’t have demon face.

Just to be a nerd, Darla was sired in 1609, so wasn't even 400 when she died (whichever time)

 

[Greg Cox]

Another movie or show where a little girl routinely beats the hell out of grown men.

As opposed to, say, all those shows and movies where a guy in a cape routinely beats the hell of hordes of armed mobsters, or where a blind lawyer is secretly a kick-ass vigilante, or an archer fights crime in a big city with a bow and arrow, or where a loose-cannon secret agent routinely saves the world by seducing beautiful women and having high-speed car chases in exotic locations?

Next you're going to tell me that one lone cop wouldn't be able to single-handedly defeat an entire skyscraper full of terrorists on Christmas Eve . . . .

 

[JD]

As far as the status of Batgirl, it sure seems like it's been a while since we've heard anything about it. I kinda wonder if maybe the story about Joss Whedon directing Batgirl, while being considered, was being used more as a blind to conceal that the real reason why Warner Bros. brought him in from the beginning was to re-tool Justice League behind Zack Snyder's back.

Nothing happened behind Zack Snyder's back, he made the choice to leave the movie to deal with the fact that his daughter committed suicide, and he was fully aware of Joss Whedon taking over the movie.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I'd say, dig up some old episodes of "Blake's 7" (1978-81) and watch Jenna, Cally and/or Dayna beat the hell out of grown men. Especially Bayban the Butcher!

Sadly, Blake's 7 isn't available on DVD in the U.S.

Nothing happened behind Zack Snyder's back, he made the choice to leave the movie to deal with the fact that his daughter committed suicide, and he was fully aware of Joss Whedon taking over the movie.

That's the story. And it may be the truth. But there have often been instances where we're told one thing about the behind-the-scenes machinations in show biz when the truth is really something different but everyone agreed to the lie because it helped everyone save face. J. Michael Straczynski recently admitted that Michael O'Hare left Babylon 5 because he was suffering from mental illness, a secret that JMS kept for nearly 20 years until O'Hare died. Back in the 1960s, there were news interviews with William Hartnell indicating that he left Doctor Who because he just wanted to move on after 3 years. Later interviews with other members of the production team have since revealed that he was fired because he didn't get along with the producers and couldn't remember his lines. When Doyle was killed off early during the 1st season of Angel, interviews with Joss Whedon at the time indicated that this had always been the plan to shock the audience by introducing such an important character and then killing him off after only 9 episodes. However, there were rumors at the time that the actor was really fired from the show because he had a drug problem, a theory reinforced when he died of a drug overdose only 3 years later. (And further reinforced, IMO, by the fact that the bonus features on the Season 1 DVDs seem to avoid mentioning Doyle at every opportunity. Even in the photo gallery, they only included photos of him in demon makeup and those were shown alongside the other demon-of-the-week characters rather than being mixed in with the photos of the other 3 main characters.)

So, while it's entirely possible that Snyder willingly left the film for personal reasons, I think it's also equally possible that Warner Bros. forced him off of the picture against his will in the hopes that Joss Whedon could morph the film from a dark, controversial movie like Batman v. Superman to a lighter, more crowd pleasing cash cow like The Avengers. Both parties would have a reason to go along with a lie like that; Snyder to avoid the indignity & stigma of being publicly fired from such a prominent movie franchise and Warner Bros. to avoid the implication that the movie was in trouble. Certainly some of Snyder's behavior since the movie's release has indicated that he was very much not onboard with the changes that Whedon made to the film.

BTW, I was thinking about Joss Whedon's personal difficulties and couldn't help but think that his song choice at the beginning of Justice League was pretty apt:
"Everybody knows that you love me, baby.
Everybody knows that you really do.
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Give or take a night or two.
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes.
Everybody knows."

 

[LJones41]

So, while it's entirely possible that Snyder willingly left the film for personal reasons, I think it's also equally possible that Warner Bros. forced him off of the picture against his will in the hopes that Joss Whedon could morph the film from a dark, controversial movie like Batman v. Superman to a lighter, more crowd pleasing cash cow like The Avengers.

I suspect this is what happened. And I believe they and Whedon had butchered the last third of "Justice League" in the process.

As for Whedon . . . as much as I enjoyed 2012's "The Avengers", I believe "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" represented the height of his talents in movies and television.

 

[Mudd]

BTVS and Firefly, for TV. Movies? Early days, yet. A lot of what I liked about the first two Avengers movies and the Justice League flick were clearly his influence.

 

[Set Harth]

The Pet Sematary thing was him, right?

 

[JD]

I would think they would have come up with something a lot less sensitive than his daughter committing suicide if they were lying. Using a situation like that to cover something like that up would one of the most disgusting fucking things I have ever heard of, and while I know Hollywood suits can be dicks, I find hard to believe anyone would be that bad.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I'm not sure why everyone assumes that it must be 100% one or the other. It seems entirely possible to me that Snyder was having difficulty due to his family and tragedy and that WB was becoming more unhappy with the way the movie was shaping up and that both these things together eventually led them all to agree that it would be better for him to step back - but for civility's sake, there would be no need for anyone to talk about all the things they were unhappy with.

 

[wayoung]

The only reason to suspect that Joss and Batgirl could be parting ways is because of the casting couch accusations against him by his ex (that no one besides Joss has denied) and the fact that for Batgirl he'd be involved in casting a young female lead. Does the studio want to risk that in today's climate? Who knows. Someone was dumb enough to greenlight I Love You Daddy.

Those accusations seem to have been mostly ignored since they came out right before all the Weinstein accusations and the subsequent accusations that followed. Whedon's even been posting pro #metoo material - which seems kinda hypocritical in his case.

(Personally, the accusations sound fairly plausible to me. A rich, powerful Hollywood producer using his position to sleep with beautiful young starlets? I'd be more shocked if they weren't true)

 

[Mudd]

I think that if Hollywood stops hiring people because of nasty things their exes claim about them the studios will be shuttered in no time.

 

[ClayinCA]

I think that if Hollywood stops hiring people because of nasty things their exes claim about them the studios will be shuttered in no time.

You say that like it's a bad thing.