Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot is “on pause”…which likely means it’s dead
By Dan Selcke
A while back, we heard that Joss Whedon was planning a reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer…yeah, probably not gonna happen.
In Hollywood, TV series often stall and peter out over time. Sometimes they get pretty far before networks pull the plug; remember when HBO shot a whole pilot for a Game of Thrones prequel and decided not to air it? The forthcoming reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn’t get quite that far, but executive producer Gail Berman said on THR’s TV’s Top 5 podcast that it’s “on pause.” In her own words, that’s “industry speak for purgatory, make of that what you will.”
If I can go further, that probably means the project is dead. The idea of a Buffy reboot first started circulating in 2018; original series creator Joss Whedon was developing the idea with Monica Owusu-Breen signed on as showrunner. This was before a wall of s**t fell on Whedon in the form of various actors he’d worked with — most notably Justice League’s Ray Fisher and Buffy’s own Charisma Carpenter — accusing him of unsavory behavior on his sets. Next thing thing you know, Whedon is parting ways with his new HBO show The Nevers and there isn’t much talk about his forthcoming Buffy reboot.
Meanwhile, as The A.V. Club points out, Owusu-Breen has joined the writer’s room of the new Percy Jackson series at Disney+, which probably isn’t the kind of thing you do if you have a show of your own to run. In short: I wouldn’t count on seeing Buffy make a comeback anytime soon.
As a huge fan of the original show, this is probably for the best. To start, I don’t know if the series has aged enough to need a remake…honestly, there’s precious little that ever needs a remake, however much Hollywood seems to love them. Pair that with Whedon’s radioactivity, and I’m happy to let this one slide into obscurity.
Next. House of the Dragon gets off to a confident, compelling start. dark
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