‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Reboot In The Works With Joss Whedon & Monica Owusu-Breen
Various reports have appeared online this weekend that there is a ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ reboot in the works again…
This new version comes Monica Owusu-Breen (‘Midnight, Texas’, ‘Agents Of SHIELD’) who would write the series and serve as showrunner. Original show creator, Joss Whedon, would be exec producer and is working with Owusu-Breen on the script. The main twist with the new iteration would be that they are looking for an African-American actress for the lead role.
The show would build on the mythology of the original series, and according to the producers, “like our world, it will be richly diverse, and like the original, some aspects of the series could be seen as metaphors for issues facing us all today.”
The idea of rebooting our beloved ‘Buffy’ have been around since 2010, when original producers, Fran and Kaz Kuzui, talked about rebooting it without Joss. Thankfully, that version never went anywhere. ‘Buffy’ has an interesting history, given that it started out as a low-budget movie, written but not directed by Joss. He then went on to create the infinitely superior tv series which spawned the spin-off ‘Angel’, and a host of comic books.
Currently, there is no network attached, but it will be shopped around to cable tv and streaming services later in the Summer by producers, 20th Century Fox TV, who hold the rights to the show. Original show producers Gail Berman, Joe Earley, Fran and Kaz Kazui will serve as producers on the new show as well.
Whilst we’d much rather have a show which is a direct continuation of the Buffyverse, not a complete reboot, it is encouraging to see Joss involved with the series. Monica Owusu-Breen is also a good pick to shepherd the show. She’s previously worked on ‘Midnight, Texas’, ‘Agents Of SHIELD’, ‘Fringe’, ‘Alias’ and ‘Charmed’, so is someone who knows a thing or two about genre tv shows.
The ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ reboot is still in the early stages at the moment, but we’ll let you know when we hear more.
3 comments
Really? But the original show (well, its canon comic continuation) is still running, with the final, short 12th season ending only in September this year.
While I certainly wouldn’t mind another female-centric supernatural show, it seems kind of superfluous at the moment, given that “Wynonna Earp” is Buffy’s clear spiritual successor. (Aside from the identical genre, the show’s brand of feminism is obviously meant for women who grew up with Buffy but who now are around 30 and need both more mature themes and somewhat more advanced feminist concepts than just “girl power”. The main characters are obviously heavily inspired by Faith and Willow.)
I agree though that it would be much better if they’d just make this another Slayer generation instead of rehashing old plot – they wouldn’t even have to kill off Buffy for that, since she’s been out of the Slayer line since her 5-minute-death at the end of Season 1. Though a in-universe continuation probably wouldn’t work with the comic plotline (where “the Masquerade” / Status Quo was thrown out years ago, so you would have to work with a setting that was quite different than the real world) and they’d need some sort of explanation why the Slayer power was again concentrated in just one girl. Still, in the Buffyverse that was supposed to happen at some point anyway, considering the Fray scifi comics, where there is once again only one Slayer.
… In fact, why not just put this new show in the Fray setting, several centuries in the future? That certainly would be more interesting (to a wider audience) than yet another superhero having to deal with ordinary high school problems.
“Midnight, Texas” writing credentials really aren’t a good sign, however. There’s something very… off… about that show. I can’t place my finger on what exactly is the problem (a lot of it may be the astoundingly soap-opera-like acting) but I’ve never seen a scifi/fantasy show over the last 20 years that was so aggressively mediocre and charmless, and I watch pretty much every scifi/fantasy show that isn’t about American-style comic superheroes. It’s like paint-by-numbers, nothing stands out, nothing is special or imaginative. It’s worlds away from “True Blood” in terms of quality – so much that I can’t believe the source material of both shows comes from the same author. That’s not a good sign in terms of the show writers and their level of skill.
I do agree with you that a ‘Fray’ series would be something i’d love to see. The one redeeming feature of this reboot is that Joss seems to be onboard, and they do say “build on the mythology of the original series”… So maybe it will end up as a new Buffyverse show and not a reboot, which I think would get a better reaction from fans. I’m really not sold on the idea of just rebooting the original.
I adored Buffy when it was on TV and have watched the DVD’s dozens of times. A rebbot is a terrible idea. Why try to fix something that clearly isn’t broke? Come up with something original, please
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