A lot of people are just flat sick of hearing about fanboy-favorite Firefly and its seemingly impossible resurrection. Even I, someone who very much loves and misses the show, sometimes hates reading rumors about the show or how it may one day return to us. None-the-less, every once in a while, you just need to buckle down and revisit the topic and where it may currently stand in this completely unfair and tragic hell that Firefly has been prisoner to for many years now.

TV By The Numbers has a great piece from The Nick C Blog on some of the options that exist for just such a thing to happen, as well as whether Joss Whedon‘s Dollhouse getting a second season helps Firefly out.

The most intriguing part of this article, is that the man who wrote it has apparently had plenty of contact with Fox and its people. The main question posed to them is as it always has been: is there any way that Fox would actually do what we hope and pray–yet highly-doubt would ever happen and bring back Firefly? Surprisingly, the answer seems to be “yes,” if it were under the proper circumstances. As they stress in this story, all of the stars of the show are quite busy with their own shows right now, and all of those shows seem to be fairly popular to boot, so the chances of the right circumstances to renew the series coming along are highly-unlikely. So where does this leave us? Well, right back where we’ve been: movies.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago at a Q&A session, Alan Tudyk dropped a little bomb that because the show and its cinematic follow-up Serenity had done so great with DVD sales, the suits were pondering bringing it back in the form of some direct-to-DVD movies. At the time this was the greatest news ever because it was a fair and incredibly logical answer, as well as a way for all of us to get our damn Firefly back. Unfortunately, it also turned out to be falsely interpreted…or was it?

It seems like right now — because all of the cast and crew are happily employed with shows like Castle, V, Dollhouse, and Chuck — making TV movies is the way to go. It would allow the actors and Whedon to get together and make a movie or two when they have some time off; it would be fairly cheap to do; and the subsequent DVDs to be released would most likely make a strong profit. If this happened and all went well with money and numbers, but not so well for the actors’ other shows, it could lead to a series revival.

It appears that Fox isn’t the only controlling factor in this anymore, either. Universal apparently also owns rights to future projects, which would bring NBC and USA into the aforementioned TV options. We’ve always wondered whether Fox just had a strangle-hold on the property and refused to sell it or do anything with it. Knowing now that Universal and others have power and could get things moving is a really good sign. Just the fact that there was some kind of contractual element that transferred some rights to Universal for the future is a really good sign that they’ve always been aware of the show’s early death, and how promising some kind of revival could be.

I always have, and still remain someone who feels this is going to happen at some point, some day. It may not be soon and the road has already been a long one, but for this topic to be one that just simply refuses to die says a ton about how determined the fans are, and how strong the property really is. In the end, it just makes too much sense to do — as we’ve seen in similar cases like Family Guy and Futurama. In all honesty, I think the only way that people will just let it go and move on is if they bring it back and it sucks for some miraculous and impossible reason.

As repetitive as these rumors can be, we can only hope that they show how much interest still remains, and ultimately bring some form of Firefly back to tell the stories it was meant to tell and never had the chance to.

[Source: via io9]