5 Classic Sci-Fi Series That Should Be Next for a Firefly-Style Animated Revival

Well, this is a twist I did not have on my 2026 bingo card: Firefly is coming back... as animation. And honestly, that might be the smartest way to do it.

Firefly is (still) flying

Nathan Fillion says an animated Firefly series is in development under the working title 'Firefly: Still Flying,' with the original cast returning to voice their characters. The show is set between the original 2002 TV run (the one Fox canceled after airing just 11 episodes) and the 2005 feature Serenity that Universal bankrolled to give fans some closure on Malcolm Reynolds and his crew.

Behind the scenes: ShadowMachine, the animation house that worked on Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, is handling production. Marc Guggenheim and Tara Butters are on board as showrunners. So, yes, this is being built by people who actually know how to make TV and animation at scale.

The timeline choice makes sense. It fills in the space between the show and the movie, which is prime real estate for character moments and scrappy heists without retcon headaches.

Why animation is the play

High-concept sci-fi in live action is expensive. Ships, planets, crowds, gunfights, VFX — that bill adds up fast. Animation knocks those costs down and dodges real-world constraints like actors aging out of roles or, in Firefly's case, the loss of Ron Glass, who was part of the core cast. Animation also lets you go big on strange worlds and tech without worrying how to build it on a soundstage. If this lands, it opens the door for other sci-fi favorites to come back in smarter, more sustainable ways.

Five other sci-fi shows that would crush it as animated revivals

• Terra Nova (Fox, 2011)
  Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, this one followed a family sent 85 million years into the past — a parallel Cretaceous Earth — to start a new human colony. The show built massive sets in Queensland, Australia and pumped money into CGI dinosaurs, which made it one of TV's most expensive series at the time. It still got canceled after 13 episodes. In animation, you could fully realize the prehistoric ecosystem, the hostile Sixer faction, and, crucially, pay off the season-one cliffhanger about that 18th-century ship discovered in the Badlands.
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox, 2008–2009)
  Showrunner Josh Friedman expanded James Cameron 's mythology with a sharp focus on the mental wear-and-tear of trying to dodge fate. The core trio — Sarah Connor (Lena Headey), John (Thomas Dekker), and reprogrammed Terminator Cameron (Summer Glau) — navigated a fracturing timeline stuffed with AI threats. The series ended on a brutal cliffhanger: John jumps to a post-Judgment Day future where his own Resistance allies, including his father Kyle Reese (Jonathan Jackson) and uncle Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green), have no idea who he is. An animated revival could finally live in that future-war setting without bankrupting a network and bring back the original cast as voices without age being a factor.
• Dark Angel (Fox, 2000–2002)
  Co-created by James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee, this cyberpunk drama turned Jessica Alba into a star as Max Guevara, a genetically engineered escapee on the run from the Manticore program, paired with cyber-journalist Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly) in a dystopian Seattle. Despite a splashy, expensive pilot and strong early ratings, rising costs ended it after season two, right as Max and the other transgenics were surrounded by the U.S. military in a ruined section of the city. In animation, you can lean into the graphic-novel vibe Cameron originally chased, stage elaborate fights and powers on a TV budget, and avoid the uncanny valley of recreating actors' younger live-action looks decades later.
• Stargate (SG-1, Atlantis, Universe; dormant since 2011)
  After more than a decade of TV dominance, the franchise went quiet. Amazon recently killed a planned live-action revival that franchise veteran Martin Gero had been developing for over two years with original producers, reportedly worried it would not reach beyond the core fanbase. If live action is a non-starter, a canonical animated series is the clean pivot: you can reunite legacy cast for new missions without the physical grind and giant stunt budgets, and even resolve Stargate Universe's last image — the Destiny crew left in cryo, drifting between galaxies.
• Farscape (Syfy, 1999–2003)
  From The Jim Henson Company and creator Rockne S. O'Bannon, Farscape mixed wild alien design with heartfelt character work, following astronaut John Crichton (Ben Browder) and Peacekeeper Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) aboard a living Leviathan. Canceled after four seasons in 2002, it got a wrap-up with The Peacekeeper Wars, but the universe is still overflowing with places to go. The original puppetry and prosthetics were part of the magic; animation could honor that colorful aesthetic at a fraction of the cost and push deeper into the Uncharted Territories for a new generation.

The bottom line

If Firefly: Still Flying sticks the landing, it is not just a nostalgia play — it is a playbook. Some of TV's most ambitious sci-fi worlds were sunk by budget math, not bad ideas. Animation gives those ideas a second shot.

Which one would you bring back first?