AVC: With that in mind, what can you say about Goners, the horror-fantasy film you're developing?
JW: Well, there may be some female empowerment in it at some point. [Laughs.] I don't know who put that there. It's the same brew that I tend to brew, which is a combination of horror, and heroes, and people crying, and female empowerment. It's been the thing that's made my career, but it's also the thing that's come the closest to killing it: Whenever I write anything, I want to stuff every genre in that I possibly can. And then people are like, "Well, we don't know how to market that, and if we don't know how to market it…" [Whispers.] "We're not going to make it." [Laughs.] Although Universal's been great, and they understand exactly what I want, what the movie's about. In 18 months of working on Wonder Woman, nobody asked me what the movie was about, whereas at Universal, I've never had that problem. They really get it. Obviously, Goners is about human connection, and loneliness, and responsibility, and power, and the things that I inevitably end up writing about, because they're the only things that interest me. Besides sex, and there's not a lot of sex in it. I'll probably have to change that in my next rewrite.
AVC: What's its current status?
JW: I'm rewriting it. Rather more often than I'd hoped. [Laughs.] It's pretty much where it was, which is bought by Universal, but not greenlit.
AVC: Do you intend it as a stand-alone project, or a new franchise?
JW: Yes. Yes, it has the potential to be the f-word, franchise. That can sometimes kill you, because when people start seeing that, sometimes they stop seeing the movie. It killed me with Serenity, because everybody was left with a bad taste in their mouth. We kind of failed. The movie did not make scads, at the box office, it barely broke even. But it made oodles of money on DVD, it's doing just fine. But everyone was like, "Wow, we didn't get to make the trilogy." There was never a trilogy! In this sense, this movie is very much a journey. It's not just a classic superhero movie—set up a premise, and here are some cool people, here are the rules, and let's go. It's very much this woman's journey, and it's a very painful, strange, hellish journey. I have to concentrate on that, not the fact that there may be dolls. But, unfortunately, once the word "franchise" comes up, people look at the structure of the script you've given them differently. That's just going to happen. The word "franchise" has almost killed my career. If people don't stop using it, I'm going to get very twitchy.
AVC: So were all the claims that there were two more Serenity movies planned just false rumors?
JW: People were like, [French accent.] "Eet's a three-picture deal." I was doing a lot of press in Europe. I was like, "No, it's a picture deal." And then, you know, [French accent.] "How do you feel about ze French?" I was like, "Guys, nobody's gone to see the movie yet. We haven't finished making it. Stop calling it a franchise." Almost every question was about, "Are there plans for more?" I get that it came from a TV series, so it already sort of had a built-in fan base that made it feel like a franchise. I understand why I was plagued with the question, but it really did turn into a plague. The fans themselves went to the theatre, saw the movie, and were like, "Oh, I guess he isn't going to get to make any more, the theater wasn't that full." But the movie, we made the movie. Believe me, I will take my rage about the death of Firefly to the grave, but we still pulled off something kind of miraculous. It got buried by the franchise concept. That is not to say that if somebody said, "Hey, you want to do another one of those?" I wouldn't jump on it in a heartbeat, because I would. But it does sort of tend to overwhelm everything else.
AVC: Does Fox still own the rights to Firefly?
JW: It's a situation that could not be untangled by me, but yes, they own the rights to Firefly, Universal has the rights to Serenity, and how that all works out is very strange to me.
AVC: What do you think it would take to get another Serenity movie made?
JW: Profit. They're putting out the Collector's Edition DVD, because the DVD is selling so very well. That's something that maybe, some time from now, someone will look at the numbers and go, "Well, that was worth it. Let's do that again. Let's do it smaller, let's do it different." I'd do it on radio. As long as I could write dialogue for those actors, I'd be in a happy place.
AVC: A while back, a group of fans started to try and organize a "fan fund" to get a second season of the show made. Do you think that model could ever work?
JW: You know, I've had the model described, and I believe there is a way in which it could work, but I don't think that the way entertainment is structured right now, that people are ready for it to work that way. I do think that the level of fan involvement in getting things put on will start to extend well beyond letter-writing campaigns. I've very intrigued by the concept of involving the fans at ground level. Saying, "This is what we want to do. Anyone want to see it?" Instead of saying that to a bunch of guys in a room, saying it to the world. I think that could be very fascinating.
AVC: What's the latest on further Serenity comics?
JW: There is one coming out later this year. I'm just going over the second-issue script, by Brett Matthews. It'll be another three-issue piece like the last one.
AVC: Getting back to Goners… You've been very secretive about the plot, just as you've always been close-mouthed about your projects in advance. Which makes a lot of sense when people are trying to get you to admit how you're going to resolve some big cliffhanger on one of your shows, but it seems a little odder when you're talking about an unknown project.
JW: The fact of the matter is, I'm not trying to sell it. In fact, I'm trying to keep it from being sold, because if everybody gets sold on it, and it doesn't happen for two and a half years, they'll feel like they already bought it. The people to whom I must sell it have bought it. [Laughs.] That's good. They got to read the whole script. There's no way everybody who wants to can find everything they want to know about the movie before it comes out. That is one of the worst things in our culture. I believe it's destroying storytelling. Now, I can't stop it, but I'm certainly not going to lay out the entire story when I haven't even got a green light on production, because then, people already feel like they've lived with a character, and not in a good way. It's not intelligent marketing, and it's not intelligent storytelling. I understand there's a limit. There's a point at which you have to talk about it. I struggled with this while doing the promos for Buffy, when people were like, "This act-two twist is what makes people come see the show. You absolutely have to put it in the preview." The entire world has turned into the opening credits from Battlestar Galactica and that just can't be. My wife and I always shut our eyes during those.
AVC: Is there a conscious philosophy to avoiding spoilers rather than seeking them out? There are fanatics on both sides of that divide.
JW: You know, I had older brothers, and I don't think there's anything worse than an older brother. They pretty much told me the end of everything they got to see before I did. It occurred to me very early on, "This would have been a lot more fun if I hadn't known everything that was going to happen before it happened." I got a little neurotic about it, and people were like, "What up?" So I sat down and I really thought about it, and realized that there is a philosophy behind it, one that I've talked about before, and I won't bore you with. It's the idea of surprise being the point of storytelling, and the most honest emotion, because it's truly humbling. Surprise means you have to reassess what you thought. It means that you were wrong about the way things were structured, and that's exciting, and really important. It also makes for a good story. I mean, The Sixth Sense is fine the second time around, but honestly, the first time around, it's dazzling. When it matters, when it makes a difference, letting a story happen to you, letting a narrative take place instead of just waiting for placeholders is a better experience, and it feeds you. We need narrative, it feeds us in a particular way, and deconstructing it completely before you've actually experienced it, I think it leaves us unfed.
AVC: Do you get tired of fans demanding spoilers? All your online and in-person Q&As seem to revolve around people wanting to know how you're going to resolve this twist or that cliffhanger.
JW: I only get tired of having to respond in a way that I know will displease 4,000 people all at once. "Uh, no, I can't tell you that, but thanks for your interest." I wish no one wanted to be spoiled, but I get it. I love trailers, by the way. A good trailer is an awesome thing, and I tend to write trailers in my head before I write scripts, and then cull ideas from the trailers. I know what I want to feel, and to encapsulate that is useful as a storyteller, and fun. But I think the need has just gotten overwhelming. It's also just really tough now, because the questions aren't, "Is Spike going to get together with Buffy?" The questions are, "Are you ever going to do anything?" [Laughs.] I'm like, "I can't spoil that."
AVC: What do you mean when you say you write trailers before you write projects?
JW: I'll have an idea, and then I'll start to think about what's behind that, and what would be the big emotional moment, what would be the catch, what would be the thing I'd love to see. It's usually easier in a situation with a known quantity. For example, Wonder Woman. Like, how do you introduce Wonder Woman? "Oh, that's cool." I did Aliens 4. When I first wrote it, it was a 30-page treatment that was completely different from what they shot. It didn't have Ripley in it. Somebody just said, "We're interested. Would you write a treatment on spec?" I was like, "It's Alien. Are you kidding? I'll carve one on my forehead." That hurt, so I stopped and used paper. [Laughs.] Paper has worked out great for me since, really. But, I thought to myself, "Okay, I've seen three Alien movies. Alien is one of the most important franchises in my mythic history. What haven't I seen? What are the moments that I go, 'Okay, that's new, that's worse, that's good, give me that'?"
It's easy doing that with a script for a TV show. You can feel the characters, you can get to the emotional moment. With a new thing, it's still part of the process. The most obvious example, and I've used it before, is Buffy in the alley. I really thought about it: [Trailer narration voice.] "It's a bad town to be in, especially at night." There's the girl in the alley. "Especially if you're alone." And then the monster attacks her and she kills it. "And especially if you're a vampire." It was that turnaround, which I hadn't seen, and which has obviously been seen a million times now, but this was 20 years ago. I wrote that, and it's in the actual movie. They didn't use it for the trailer, and the scene isn't shot exactly how I imagined it. But when I'm thinking of a trailer moment, I'm not just thinking of how I can grab people. That's my whole philosophy. My entire career is in that trailer moment: The emotional highs of the movie, and the thing you haven't seen, and the thing you're longing for. They should all be connected.
AVC: You said in a very recent interview that you're going to find out in the next few weeks whether you're going to be able to do Goners this year. If that doesn't work out, is it likely to be scheduled for next year?
JW: Well, if it doesn't go through this year, a) that'll suck. [Laughs.] And b) something else will. That's part of the idea of putting together small projects. I gotta roll. I gotta roll. I gotta feed the beast, as they say. I love to shoot. And I love the comics, and I'm having the time of my life, and when this comes out, there will have been a new comic unveiled, and it's great, but that's not enough for me, and it's not enough for the fans, either. I need to film some people. [Laughs.] So if it's not Goners, it'll be something.
AVC: You have a lot of comics projects going on right now. You're hitting the end of your run on Astonishing X-Men, aren't you?
JW: Yes, we are. It seems to have started a long time ago. Since they decided to make us bi-monthly, when I start a new script, I have to go back and look up what happened in the last one. But it's coming along. We're headed toward the thing I pitched to John Cassaday when we were halfway through our first arc, when I said, "Hey, instead of 12, what if we did this!" We have two more issues, and then the giant-sized annual, and then we are out of there, baby.
AVC: Where are you with Runaways?
JW: I'm into the last two issues of my six-issue arc. I'm actually having the time of my life. We got to create the entire Marvel universe circa 1907, and that's really fun.
AVC: How did the trade with Brian K. Vaughan come about, with him writing Buffy and you writing Runaways?
JW: Really, it was sort of a coincidence. I had been talking to Brian for a while about doing Buffy. You know, originally there had been the idea of doing Buffy movies that Fox was going to possibly finance, and then we realized that wasn't going to work out, financially. Brian was the first non-Buffy, non-Angel person that I brought in. I had been reading his stuff and hanging out with him, and I was just a big fan and a friend, and I thought he really got it. He had some ideas about Faith, and we sat down to dinner, me, him, Tim Minear, and Drew Goddard. He threw out these ideas about Faith, and we were all like, "Dang, he's kicking it. He's really going to bring something to the table." Literally, because we were at a table.
When the comic came around, I was like, "You know that idea you had about Faith? Can we play around with that? People really want to see her, and you've got a great bead on her." The idea was always to bring in other writers. His involvement in that has been gradual and almost inevitable. But Runaways, you know, he was leaving, and Marvel brought it up, and I was like, "Please! Can't you see that I'm terribly busy?" But of course, I lost sleep for an entire night, thinking that they were so cute and I loved them so much. So that happened rather suddenly. But the fact that the exchange timed out so close, that's just a big twist of fate.
AVC: Does working with the Runaways or the X-Men make you want to explore other company-owned characters, or do you sort of scratch that itch and move on?
JW: Well, I think I pretty much scratched the Marvel itch until it bled. Marvel is in such flux, character-wise. There's so much going on, I don't really have any ground to stand on. I love working with other people's characters if they're characters that I care about. I've been reading Runaways from issue one. It was delicious fun for me to dive in and see what I would do with them. Since I am an insane fan of The Office, it was really fun for me to direct an episode, because I had very strong opinions about what everyone was going to be doing in the background, based on all of their history. It's helpful when you're a geek. Alien, same deal. Everything where you have something to build off of that you love, it's fun. There are restrictions, X-Men particularly because it has such a long history, but it also brings resonance that you can only get from a comic book, or a TV show, or a franchise, something that's gone on for a long time. You say something, and it calls back somebody's entire childhood. That's an opportunity that I adore. By the same token, the moment that you've written one episode of a TV show, you're doing the same thing. You're working with characters that already exist, and are working around them. Most of my career has been doing that. Creating something completely new out of whole cloth is liberating as hell, but you have to create resonance where there is none. It's a different kind of fun.
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