By Doug Gross, CNN
"Castle" star Nathan Fillion told EW he'd love to buy the rights to his former series, "Firefly." Fans have taken it from there.
(CNN) -- True Browncoats, like the fictional freedom fighters they named themselves after, don't give up easily.
Those diehard fans of "Firefly," the 2002 cult TV hit, have a history of turning to the internet to buck improbable odds in defense of their favorite show.
Now, they're at it again.
Just days after an apparently offhand comment from Nathan Fillion, who played Capt. Malcolm Reynolds on the short-lived Fox series, the Web has once again lit up with efforts to revive the sci-fi franchise.
Last week, Fillion, who now stars in ABC's "Castle," told Entertainment Weekly he'd love to play Mal again. Then, he ratcheted things up a notch.
"If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to "Firefly," make it on my own, and distribute it on the internet," Fillion told EW, a CNN.com partner.
Then, some possibly surprising online reactions started rolling in.
The next day, former "Firefly" writer Jose Molina wrote on Twitter: "For what it's worth, I've told him I'd drop what I was doing and follow."
Then, Jane Espenson, who wrote an episode, chimed in: "I'm there, if needed," she tweeted.
That was more than enough for fans (whose "Browncoat" nickname, by the way, comes from the Western-style dusters worn by Fillion and others on the show).
A website, "Help Nathan Buy Firefly," popped up, under the title "Let's get the Captain his money."
The goal? To set up a means of collecting pledges that would turn into donations if a revived "Firefly" looks like it could become a reality.
The pledge system hadn't been officially created as of Tuesday, but fans were already writing in the site's comment section that they're willing to pony up.
In four days, the site's Facebook group had picked up more than 23,000 members.
The creators of the site didn't immediately respond Tuesday to an interview request from CNN on their Facebook page. The website is registered anonymously.
But other devotees of the cult favorite say they're not surprised by the quick Web action.
"I couldn't believe it when I first read the story," said Brian Harvard, co-creator of the 25,000-member-strong "Bring Back Firefly" Facebook page. "Then, all of a sudden, everyone's posting these links to the 'Help Nathan Buy Firefly' page and I said, 'We've got to help get the word out about this.' "
Even before "Firefly" was officially sacked in 2002, fans had taken to the Web to try to save it. Using the online tools of the early 2000s -- message boards, fan sites, chat rooms and LiveJournal blogs -- they organized. Call it an early example of crowd-sourcing.
They collected money for an ad in Variety, organized a postcard-writing campaign to Universal Pictures and, when the DVD box set was released, raised $14,000 to put copies on 250 Navy ships for the crews to watch.
The fan base's self-styled guerrilla marketing is widely considered to have helped creator Joss Whedon get funding for 2005's "Serenity," a feature film that draws together some of the loose ends from the series.
"On the internet, that was one of the first times you've seen such a drive to bring something back," Harvard said. "Now, with the advent of Facebook? My goodness -- that's probably the most useful tool, next to the internet itself, to really bring some fire under this movement."
Harvard acknowledges that Fillion's comment sounds like an off-the-cuff quip. (And 20th Century Fox, which owns the rights to "Firefly," hasn't expressed any desire to sell them.)
But he says that doesn't mean nothing will come out of the internet reaction to it.
"Even if this project goes nowhere, at least it's something to show the powers-that-be that there's a product there that could be making them some money," he said.
Credit: CNN (www.cnn.com)
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