From AintitCool.com:

The “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” sing-a-longs are no more, cancelled by 20th Century Fox lawyers who apparently don’t feel the studio is getting a big enough taste of the sing-a-long profits.

Fox has allegedly pulled its licensing for all public exhibitions of the TV shows it owns, including all episodes of “Buffy” “Angel” and “Firefly.” The sing-a-long screenings of “Buffy” episode “Once More With Feeling” (including those held at the nation’s best cinema, Austin’s Original Alamo Drafthouse) were often accompanied by screenings of “Hush.”

Now fans of “Buffy” will have to huddle, hunted and fearful, in illegal raves or speakeasies if they want to laugh together at favorite episodes.

"We have to protect our interests, and that's what we're doing," Fox spokesman Chris Alexander tells the Associated Press. "There are plenty of legal ways for fans to enjoy Buffy, but this particular event is not going to be possible at this time."

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071012/buffy...long.html?.v=3

'Buffy' Fans Bemoan Demise of Sing-Along
Friday October 12, 5:52 pm ET
By Seth Sutel, AP Business Writer
Fans of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' Saddened As Legal Issues Torpedo Popular Sing-Along Event

NEW YORK (AP) -- Lawyers have driven a stake into the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" sing-along.
The TV show didn't exactly die when the show and its demon-fighting heroine went off the air three years ago. Driven by a fiercely loyal following, fans put together the sing-along event, a la "Rocky Horror Picture Show," where people turn up for midnight screenings of a musical episode of the show, often dressed up in costume as their favorite characters.

That all came to an end this week when the studio that owns the rights to the show got wind of what was going on.

Lawyers for Twentieth Century Fox Television, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., told a licensing company that had given the green light for the sing-along events that it had gone beyond limits of the show's licensing agreements.

All future engagements of the show, including a three-night run scheduled to start Friday in St. Louis, have been canceled.

Chris Alexander, a spokesman for the studio, said that "significant payments" would have to be made to Hollywood unions for the show to be screened in movie theaters, which is a highly unusual arrangement anyway and usually reserved for situations like one-time charity events.

That came as a shock to Clinton McClung, who had organized the sing-along events. "I understand how the entertainment industry works, but I don't understand why it has to work against me," he said.

McClung said he had sought and received a licensing arrangement from Criterion Pictures for the events, but Alexander said those permissions went beyond what Fox allowed.

The musical episode, called "Once More, With Feeling," was a departure for the show, and was written and directed by Joss Whedon, the show's creator. It was nominated for an Emmy award. Yeah, for Outstanding Music Direction

About a year ago, McClung started to show the screenings at midnight at a theater in Boston, where he had been in charge of late-night programming, and later did the same thing at an art-house cinema in New York's Greenwich Village.

McClung said a group of about 10 people volunteered to play various roles in the show at the New York theater and to appear onstage to lead the audience.

Now, he's had to cancel a costume party later this month as well as about 10 shows in theaters around the country as a result of the cease-and-desist order. He said he has already taken the sing-along event to 15 other cities, where it has mainly sold out.

In St. Louis, the Tivoli theater had booked the Buffy musical sing-along for three nights, and the opening night, Friday, was sold out.

Ted Mundorff, chief operating officer of Landmark Theaters, which owns the Tivoli, said he was disappointed that fans were being caught in the middle.

"We love the program, and we love the idea, and we're sad that we told people to come and we're not going to be able to show it," Mundorff said.

Despite the apparently insurmountable legal problems, some fans are still hanging in.

"I refuse to give up hope," said Caroline O'Connor, a 25-year-old massage therapy student in New York who appeared onstage as Willow, Buffy's best friend, and as Sweet, a demon character. "I look at it as a paperwork problem."

That's not how Fox sees it.

"We have to protect our interests, and that's what we're doing," says Alexander. "There are plenty of legal ways for fans to enjoy Buffy, but this particular event is not going to be possible at this time."

That sucks. I am glad I got to see the Ann Arbor show last month. It was so much fun.

Why is it that when a studio is acting in a totally scumbucket way, it's usually Fox?

Pity.

coughWolfram&Hartcough

Huh. I would think Fox would encourage fandom--wouldn't something like this be good publicity? It's not like they're showing the entire series. As someone who got into Buffy late, I can say that being able to see past episodes in a way that would surely piss off out-of-touch Fox execs lured my into watching seasons 6 and 7 on TV, and eventually buying all seven seasons on DVD.

Fox, Fox, Fox. They have become such greedy Philistine bastards.

Bastards!

What pisses me off is that it's because FOX just wasn't making enough money.

Fox deserves compensation for people charging admission to watch their shows in a theater, but that they would shut it down because they want more money is terrible.

Of course, now that someone else has demonstrated that there's money to be made from the Buffy Sing-A-Longs, FOX probably just wants to figure out how to stage them and keep all the profits.

Can FOX do anything right these days? Idiots...

Funny stuff. Studios bitch and whine about music industry greed concerning music rights on TV series. Then they pull this crap, proving they're all about greed themselves. For shame, for shame.

I tried to get tickets to this in San Francisco last month and it was sold out.
Ashame I will never going to see it live.
Thanks FOX.

As I said in the Hitman thread, FOX is being ran by the biggest bunch of pussies ever to have roamed the face of earth.

I think there's a blackboard somewhere in the dark recesses of Fox where someone is taking large amounts of glee seeing just HOW MANY TIMES they can cancel a Joss Whedon-related project.

Are they going to shut down the Sound of Music sing-alongs too?

From reading the article, it sounds to me like FOX pulled its support because of contract issues with unions that produced these shows to be aired on television, not in theaters. I suspect there is some legal red-tape that would force them to pay the unions a larger amount of money than they are earning from these showings. If this is the case, it seems pretty reasonable to me. Of course, I think fans should just continue doing unlicensed shows in unconventional places.

Uh, it wasn't a live performance. It was just the television episode broadcast on the big screen with an audience.

It had 10 actors playing parts in the theater and people paying to see them. It was a live exhibition with the episode playing above the performance. Any way you cut it, Fox owns the rights.

Have you ever been to a good Rocky Horror show?

Yes, several times.

this will just drive it all underground

The one I went to had no live actors, it was audience participation only. I don't think the "travelling show" has actors, just the NY one or other select markets.

Lucky!

I was planning on seeing it in Nashville and now it's cancelled.

Yes! Back in the day (late 1970s/early 1980s) it was sold out every Friday and Saturday night. Good times!

I'd never heard of this Buffy singalong thing.

FOX does own the rights, so they can do what they want, but is the money from this SO significant that they feel they're getting cheated? I can't imagine these singalongs bringing in boatloads of money.

apparently not, fuckin' shit for brains.