Biography
Born Joseph Hill Whedon on June 23rd 1964, in New York. His father, Tom Whedon was a successful screen writer who's credits included The Electric Company and
The Golden Girls. But it's not only his father who's got some writing credentials attached, Joss' grandfather was well known in the writing arena, for writing
for such classics as The Dick Van Dyke Show and Leave it to Beaver.
Joss was the youngest of three boys and at the age of nine his parents divorced. Joss began his education in New York where he attended Riverdale High. His mother, who was a teacher, decided to go on sabbatical to England. Joss decided he wanted to go for six months, but those six months turned into three years where he studied at Winchester College, Hampshire. After finishing his time at Winchester College Joss headed back to the States where he attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut. And in 1987 he graduated from Wesleyan with a B. A in film studies.
One of Joss' first jobs was working in a video store, but he soon got his big break while he was working on the sitcom, Roseanne. Initially he got a role as a story editor and then later eventually wrote for the show. He soon moved up the ladder and co-produced the successful sitcom Parenthood, which he also wrote for. In 1992 he wrote his first screenplay for a movie: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However the screenplay he initially wrote for the movie and the one that ended up being shown on the big screen were wildly different. Despite the movie not being a huge success his talent was noticed and he became known for doctoring several scripts. In 1995 Joss worked on the script for the Disney movie, Toy Story, for which he was nominated an Academy Award.
In 1996 Joss was able to revive a character he wanted to revisit; Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This time Buffy was moved to a small town called Sunnydale in California and she was at high school, given a few close friends, enemies and a Watcher. The show was an instant success, after the first season which was only commissioned 12 episodes, subsequent seasons were given 22 episodes.
The success of Buffy gave Joss new opportunities, one of which being able to create a spin-off TV show centred around a character who started out life on Buffy; Angel. Angel was co-produced with David Greenwalt and was more adult in nature to Buffy and was still a hit with the fans. Nothing seemed to be able to stop Joss. Angel continued to thrive for five seasons, with over 100 episodes.
In between the final seasons of Buffy and Angel Joss also created a whole new show, not based on anything he had done before, but based on two genres that he had an unashamed passion of: sci-fi and westerns. In 2002 Joss launched Firefly, a space western set 500 years in the future. Despite getting critical acclaim and legions of fans watching the show, the show was cancelled after only a handful of episodes were aired. Much of Firefly's demise was put to the fact that the episodes were aired out of order and opposite various other TV shows on other networks where it didn't stand a chance. But this wasn't the last of which we'd be seeing of Firefly.
Joss was keen not to let the universe he created in Firefly to just never exist again and his prayers were answered. Universal green lit a screenplay written by Joss bringing Firefly to the big screen in the form of the movie Serenity.
Along with Joss screenplay writing talents he has a huge love and talent for writing comic books. He has written a few Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel comics but also wrote an original comic called Fray, telling the tale of a future slayer. He's also currently writing the Astonishing X-Men run for Marvel.
Joss currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife Kai Cole and their two children Arden and Squire.
