A Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot is reportedly in the works, with Sarah Michelle Gellar set to return in the titular role, over two decades after the original series ended.
Buffy fan Chloé Zhao, who won the Oscar for best director in 2020 for Nomadland, is set to direct.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which began airing in 1997, follows Buffy Summers, the newest “slayer” fated to battle supernatural creatures such as vampires.
She’s guided in her quests by her watcher Rupert Giles, played by Anthony Stewart Head, and has a loyal group of friends to help her – powerful witch Willow Rosenberg played by Alyson Hannigan and Xander Harris played by Nicholas Brendon.
The series ended after seven seasons in 2003.
According to reports from multiple US news outlets, the reboot is nearing a pilot order at Hulu and Gellar is set to reprise her role as Buffy. She will only feature as a recurring character rather than a main one, though, with the new series focusing on a new slayer.
Most of the rest of the original cast is likely to return as well, Deadline reported.
Dolly Parton, whose production company, Sandollar Productions, was behind the original Buffy, told Business Insider last year that producers were “still working on” a revival. “They’re thinking about bringing it back and revamping it,” Parton, who was an uncredited producer on the cult TV series, said.
The reboot is set to be scripted by Poker Face writers Nora and Lilla Zuckerman.
Original Buffy creator Joss Whedon will reportedly not be part of the series. Whedon, who wrote the 1992 film of the same name that the series was based on, was accused in 2021 of toxic misconduct on the set of Justice League and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia Chase on Buffy, tweeted about the toxic environment Whedon allegedly created on the set. This included a claim that Whedon called her fat when she was four months pregnant, something he has denied. He has also denied allegations levelled against him about creating a toxic workplace environment.
Fellow cast members Amber Benson and Michelle Trachtenberg backed her.
“While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” Gellar said in a statement on social media.
Gellar, who will reportedly be an executive producer on the reboot, had originally been against the idea.
In 2023, she told SFX Magazine: “I am very proud of the show that we created, and [a revival] doesn’t need to be done. We wrapped that up. I am all for them continuing the story, because there’s the story of female empowerment … [but] the metaphors of Buffy were the horrors of adolescence. I think I look young but I am not an adolescent.”
In December last year, however, she shared that she was open to it after seeing popular and successful reboots of shows like Sex and the City and Dexter.
“It’s funny, I always used to say no because it’s in its bubble and it’s so perfect. But watching Sex and the City and seeing Dexter, and realizing there are ways to do it, definitely does get your mind thinking, ‘Well, maybe,’” she said on The Drew Barrymore Show, while discussing her role on Dexter prequel Dexter: Original Sin.
When co-star Christian Slater suggested a reboot wouldn’t necessarily have to be a prequel, Gellar agreed. “No, it could be anything,” she said. “It’s a universe. And it makes you realize that in this world, we need those heroes, I think, more so than ever.”
The Deadline report said that negotiations for the reboot with Gellar had begun when these comments were made and they were now in their “final stages”.
Zhao, who also directed Marvel’s Eternals, said in 2021 that she’s been a longtime fan of the series.
“I’ve been a Buffy fan my whole life,” she said in a 2021 TodayOnline interview. “So when the first Avengers came out, ‘Wow, we are going to do this, we are going to bring the heroes together!’ That got me really into the door.”
The Independent has reached out to Hulu for comment.
