"Firefly" Revival Being Developed as an Animated Series

“Firefly” is coming back, sorta.

Star Nathan Fillion, who had been teasing some sort of revival of the cult hit series — which lasted less than one season, and then returned as a movie — revealed that there will be an animated show currently in very early stages of development.

Seasoned TV exec producers (and married writing duo) Marc Guggenheim (“Arrow”) and Tara Butters (“Marvel’s Agent Carter”) will serve as showrunners, and the show will take place between the TV show (which ran in 2002) and the 2005 feature “Serenity.”

Animation Studio ShadowMachine is handling the visuals. Fillion’s Collision33 is developing with 20th Television Animation.

Fillion was set to share the news on Sunday at the Awesome Con event in Washington, D.C., and also detail the news on the “Once We Were Spacemen” podcast, which he and co-star Alan Tudyk (Hoban “Wash” Washburne) launched in November.

On the “Once We Were Spaceman” Instagram page, the podcast urged fans to promote the news: “The word is out. To keep Firefly flying, we need a home. And for that, we need you. Like this post, comment on this post, and repost this post. Tag a friend, tag an enemy, even tag a Reaver. Give us some ‘quantifiable analytics’ that we can use to convince folks that this is something people want.”

In cryptic social media videos last week with co-stars Gina Torres (Zoë Washburne), Morena Baccarin (Inara Serra), Sean Maher (Dr. Simon Tam), Summer Glau (River Tam), Jewel Staite (Kaylee Frye), and Adam Baldwin (Jayne Cobb), Fillion had hinted that something was afoot.

Fillion and the “Firefly” cast have remained tight, as the recent social media posts and podcast prove. “Firefly” remains a popular show on the comic convention circuit, with frequent cast reunion panels — where the subject of a Season 2 often comes up.

“Full-time, please,” Fillion said at a New York Comic-Con, for example. Tudyk also partnered with Fillion to star in and produce the crowd-funded series “Con Man,” which was inspired in part by their experience on the comic con circuit tubthumping “Firefly.”

Set 500 years into the future during a global civil war, “Firefly” charted the whereabouts of spaceship Serenity and its nine crew members in the year 2517.

The show didn’t last long, but it became a cult phenomenon soon after its 2002 premiere.

Fox cancelled the show after 11 episodes largely because of low ratings.

Whedon isn’t involved in this revival, just as he wasn’t a part of the recent attempt to revive his “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which had been in development at Hulu until this most recent iteration (from Chloé Zhao) was scrapped earlier this week. Star Sarah Michelle Gellar, who was set to join the revival, revealed that news in a social post.