Buffy the Vampire Slayer is getting rebooted, with Joss Whedon involved. Hollywood Reporter: 20th Century Fox Television, who produced the original Joss Whedon drama, has offered a new take on the beloved Sarah Michelle Gellar drama in development. Writer Monica Owusu-Breen, who worked with Whedon on ABC's Agents of SHIELD, has been hired to pen the adaptation and serve as showrunner on the reboot. Whedon will be an executive producer on the series and has been working with Owusu-Breen on the script, which features a black actress stepping into the role of Buffy made famous by Gellar. Gail Berman, Joe Earley, Fran Kazui and Kaz Kazui (who produced Whedon's original Buffy film that inspired the TV series) will also serve as exec producers on the potential series. A network is not yet attached for the new Buffy. Producers Fox 21 TV Studios will pitch the Buffy redo to streaming and cable outlets later this summer in a package bound to ignite a bidding war. It's unclear if Whedon will have any additional role on the new Buffy due to his other commitments, which include HBO's recent straight-to-series order The Nevers. I hope they either take a sequel-like approach (less likely given that everyone's referring to it as a reboot) or tell a totally new story based on the same premise. Buffy had a good character arc and we don't really need to see it retold, but there's plenty of room for more good stories set in that universe ...
"... stepping into the role of Buffy made famous by Gellar." Sounds like a reboot, and not a sequel or a "totally new story based on the same premise". But who knows. Not really a meaty enough news item.
I assume that's meant to say "everyone who hasn't died" Interested to see what they do tonally, imagine that Wednesday would be a good inspiration.
Translation, "we're going to insert modern politics and probably have a trans character and the writing will be agenda driven and not story and character driven." RIP. Star Wars RIP Star Trek RIP Dr. Who RIP MCU and now RIP Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Tell me, did you ever watch Buffy or Angel? Because if you did, you would have seen prime examples about how story and character driven series can comfortably co-exist with modern politics. And almost needless to say, but the reports of the demise of those franchises are greatly exaggerated.
Given that the First still exists, maybe it was indeed meant to be "everyone who has died." Honestly, I would like to see some of the characters who have died (Anya and Tara) a fair amount, and there's flashbacks and magic to make that happen if they really, really want. Bringing back Angel or Spike might be a problem since their actors have obviously aged since the early 2000s. I think it would be funny to cast someone in the role of The Immortal. I could see Giles, Willow and Faith making cameos, and maybe even Seth Green as Oz. I do wonder if they could/would bring back either Xander as the character or Nicholas Brendon as the one who portrays him.
Well, to be pedantic about it, I don't think Willow ever identified as bisexual. She pretty much goes right from "pining for Oz" to "I have this really close female friend" to "gay now!" Presumably if she were bisexual in Season 7, there would have been no need for her to try to magick RJ into a woman when he was using his enchanted varsity jacket. However, yes, Buffy was plenty woke, and anybody who whines about that is demonstrating that they didn't understand the series at all.
I suppose we have to qualify woke as "for its time." It still was a product of Joss Whedon and network TV. So despite being in SoCal, the seven seasons had basically 4 people of color characters of much significance that come to mind: Kendra (a fellow Slayer killed shortly after her introduction), a henchman to the Mayor (the season 3 Big Bad) whose name escaped me and who lampshaded how white it was in the 'Dale, Riley's friend from the Initiative, and Robin Wood (who was principal of the new Sunnydale High and had a whole season), plus I guess Robin's mom, who was a former Slayer. The gender politics were in many ways forward thinking but also in many ways reflective of a guy who apparently could not be trusted alone with a 16-year-old actress. I hope for the best with the continuation. But given such meh sequels as Veronica Mars, I do worry about whether it would be better to leave things as they are.
Need to magick RJ into a woman? No. Desire? Sure. To put it in other terms, a person might be very attracted to their girlfriend/spouse as is, but if they could magick them into an even hotter form, many would.
Sarah Michelle Gellar ‘Never Thought’ She’d Play Buffy Again, Says You Can Understand ‘Vampire Slayer’ Reboot Without Watching Original Show
I actually dislike how in order to entice and accommodate new viewers, projects make characters act and say things that include exposition dumps that would be unnatural if this were the real world.
It’s dead. https://deadline.com/2026/03/buffy-reboot-dead-sarah-michelle-gellar-hulu-chloe-zhao-1236753736/
Like I said in the Firefly thread... anything connected to Whedon is dead. It's poison at this point. I can't believe Hulu even greenlit him writing an episode. And personal life aside... modern youtube reviewers seem to view his punchy dialogue as very "90s." So I don't know what this almost-Whedon-less Buffy looked like, but I also know that almost no one wants a Whedon-involved Buffy. So where would that even leave this series? Starting out with a very lukewarm reception, that's for sure. And I feel like the pilot must have been BAD. Like really bad. I could start throwing shade at the people involved but I won't since I've not seen the product. Part of me thinks that the pilot might have been Starfleet Academy levels of woke and Hulu decided it just wouldn't sell. They might not have wanted to put out a hate-watch show. Then again, maybe it was just boring. I think they were setting up the girl who played the kid captain in Star Wars Skeleton Crew as the new Buffy. I don't know what that kid's actual talents are, but she was the most bland part of Skeleton Crew. It's all speculation at this point, but I think Buffy is probably better off in the 90s.
How bad must the pilot have been? I think the time for a Buffy revival would have been during the metoo time, could have made it wonderfully meta with someone from original series doing a Wormhole X-Treme job with a new light horror series, the head writer being a bit of a creep, and the lead unhappily taking up the mantle of the Chosen One. These days? Bit of a struggle, strong female leads aren't nearly as rare as the 90s, so you lose that, and if you went down the path of a trans Slayer to try and capture that in a modern way, well, not even the Hellmouth could swallow that amount of online outrage. Much as with Starfleet Academy, who's the target audience? Gen Z? Gen X/Millennials looking for nostalgia? At least SFA comes with a 60 year old franchise to help it find its feet, Buffy hasn't got that.
Can you give examples of characters in pop culture where their bisexuality was their entire personality or the sole reason they existed?
I don't think one could reasonably say that about Willow (at least from a CHUD perspective) because originally Willow had it so bad for Xander and it wasn't until S3 that there was any hint that she might be at all attracted to women. I think it is more likely that what CHUDtube would have said was that they ruined the great character of Willow by the woke/message preaching that she was bisexual/gay. Of course, that would have required CHUDtube to be watching BTVS in the first place, which I don't think they would be caught dead doing back then unless the latest issue of Maxim was late and they wanted some PG-13 wank material.
