Jericho may be dead as a series, but as long as there’s a rabid fanbase out there for it, even a small one, odds are that someone will find a way to cash in on it. In fact, it seems pretty likely since the show’s creative team seems interested in finding a new way to continue it. Maybe even as a movie?
Executive producer Carol Barbee discussed that possibility and others yesterday in an interview with SciFiWire. She says, “There's definitely an Internet series to be had, and we always talked about a graphic novel, and ... a movie. I mean, there are lots of things that I could easily see as a way to continue the story."
Right now that’s probably just wishful thinking on her part, since the cast and crew didn’t even find out the show was cancelled until this week, the week their last episode aired. And of course there would be obstacles to continuing it in another format. They’d have to lock up the cast, and they might need someone to give them money. Unless they plan on turning it to one of those lame internet series with budget actors and cardboard sets. Actually, that could be fun.
Fans saved the series from cancellation once by deluging CBS with symbolic nuts, but their efforts weren’t enough to keep it on the air for a third season. Sound familiar? It’s not all that different from what happened to a little television show called Star Trek. You may have heard of it. Cancelled once, saved by fans, cancelled again… turned into a movie and subsequently one of the biggest multimedia franchises on the planet.
Watch out Skeet Ulrich you could be the next William Shatner, though you might not want to start working on that spoken word album quite yet. Putting aside whether there’s enough fan support to launch this thing into the theatrical world, the show has never struck me as particularly cinematic in nature. It tackles the notion of the apocalypse from a pretty small scale. It’s more like a post-apocalyptic soap opera than anything, and while I can see why that might have appeal for a certain small group of devotees on television, it’s hard to see Jericho working very well as a movie… or at least as a very good movie. Not that something not being good has stopped Hollywood before. If someone thinks there’s still money to be made of Jericho then anything is possible. CBS obviously, doesn’t, and so they gave it and its hardcore fans the big adios.
