From the excellent resourceFireflyMovie.com – News comes a set report from Joss Whedon:

Today was (as I think you know) the first day of filming of Serenity. Which is pretty big for me (it felt weird to START with Mal’s death, but scheduling isn’t my area). It was a blast. Sean said it was like school was back in session after summer vacation, which I have decided to take as a compliment. Gina did a happy dance (and there are few happier sights than Gina doing a happy dance). We’re still flying. And the best part is, that’s not even why I’m posting.

Mal’s death? I think that’s Joss playing with our heads. How many Whedon characters have died and come back, or seemed to have died but it was a teaser? Well, I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count that high.

The best part (as was reported elsewhere) was that the opening date for the film is April 22nd, 2005. The good fans over at FireflyMovie are doing a lot of things to get word of mouth going on the project, such as creating banners to be used on websites promoting the Firefly DVD, such as this one. It connects to the Fox Store site for the mighty set, but if you check Amazon for it, you’ll find that it’s often available at Borders and Barnes and Noble. I’m pretty sure that a big boost in sales from the Fox store might get noticed more than other outlets by the beancounters at Fox (not my favorite studio, Fox. Keep cancelling my shows, wiseguys…).

And yes, we’ve been watching the DVD all weekend. I even dreamed about Firefly last night, and heard the theme music.

Or was it a nightmare? It featured Jayne in his horrible orange hat.