It’s been discussed over the years, but it looks like a ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ revival series might actually happen as news drops that Hulu is talking with Sarah Michelle Gellar about reprising her iconic role, with a very interesting creative team behind the project!
For those of you who, somehow, don’t know what ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ is, the original series followed Buffy Summers (Gellar) attempting to live a normal teenage life at Sunnydale High School. Guided by her Watcher, Giles (Anthony Head) and helped by friends Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Xander (Nicholas Brendon), Buffy embraced her responsibilities and destiny as a hunter of vampires and demons – making her The Slayer.
The show was originally created by Joss Whedon, although he will have no involvement in this sequel series, due to several misconduct allegations which emerged in 2020/2021. However, there is a really interesting team behind the revival.
Firstly, Oscar winner (and self-professed lifelong Buffy fanatic) Chloé Zhao (Eternals, Nomadland) is set to direct the pilot. Secondly, the writers are Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, who are showrunners/EPs of the utterly brilliant ‘Poker Face‘, and previously worked on projects such as ‘Suits’ and ‘Prodigal Son’, along with ‘Fringe’, ‘Agents Of SHIELD’, and ‘Haven’, so are no strangers to genre TV series.
The project, which comes from Disney’s 20th Television and Searchlight TV, is currently not ordered by Hulu but is due to set up a writer’s room soon to develop a pilot, which is a positive sign. According to reports, there are apparently high expectations for it being picked up to series internally at Disney.
Gellar, Zhao, and the Zuckermans would exec produce, alongside original executive producers Gail Berman, Fran Kuzui & Kaz Kuzui. Also exec producing is Dolly Parton… yes, that, Dolly Parton. The reason for that is her production company, Sandollar, was a producer of the original show.
At the moment, we obviously have no idea what direction the revival will go. ‘Buffy’ (along with ‘Angel’) was continued officially in comicbook form by Whedon and some of the other writing team after the TV series ended. However, the new series may decide to ignore that continuation of the story and go its own way so as to not confuse TV audiences with a bunch of events they haven’t seen on screen.
Whilst Gellar is the only original cast name being attached to the project at the moment, it is expected that other original cast would appear. There is certainly a will from the cast to return to the “Buffyverse” as we saw in 2023 with the release of ‘Slayers: A Buffyverse Story‘ on Audible. Written by Amber Benson, who played Tara in the series, it brought back together original cast members Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia), James Marsters (Spike), Anthony Head (Giles), Juliet Landau (Drusilla), Emma Caulfield Ford (Anya), Danny Strong (Jonathan), and James Charles Leary (Clem).
We stress, the ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ revival has not officially been ordered by Hulu yet, but the signs do look positive, so we’ll let you know if and when we hear more!
