Being Beloved Is Buffy’s Curse

Famed screenwriter William Goldman said it best – “Sequels Are Whores’ Movies”. 

Modernised for today’s world, I guess you could paraphrase it, “Reboots Are Whores’ Series”.

Too much? Too strong for this early in the day, or to be associated with the recently-murdered Buffy reboot? Not at all. If anything, I’m being too gentle, so come with me on a journey…

We were in LA over the weekend, so the Buffy cancellation news burbled throughout conversations like the weather and Timothée Chalamet getting iced while Lainey provided color commentary. But it wasn’t until we got on the plane on Tuesday that the juice started flowing.

Sarah Michelle Gellar proceeded to call out Hulu, telling PEOPLE that, “We had an executive on our show who was not only not a fan of the original, but was proud to constantly remind us that he had never seen the entirety of the series and how it wasn't for him."

So… why did he buy it, then? (Also, there was a nominal attempt by PEOPLE not to name the exec, but Deadline and others have confirmed the exec is Craig Erwich. More on him later.)

First of all, see above, “Reboots Are Whores’ Series”…

I want to be clear about what this means – especially in the context William Goldman wrote it, before context becomes a thing we’re not legally allowed to have online anymore. It means that any given idea, story, or whatever is written, initially, because the writer thinks it’s a great idea (...and that they could theoretically sell it) first and foremost.  

A sequel (or reboot) is written because the first one made money and someone wonders if there could be more money. Again, I need to be clear, this doesn’t mean a reboot is bad. In fact, they can be wonderful – my favourite movie, Sister Act 2, is a sequel, and one of the best jobs of my career was on a reboot  that ran nearly three times longer than its predecessor. Super-successful reboots get upgraded to franchises, a la Star Trek or Star Wars, and the stories go on forever…

But Buffy never got as far as being a franchise. Partly because it, and its spinoff Angel, were ahead of their time; partly because the moment where appetite for a reboot coincided with possibility was the moment Charisma Carpenter, Kai Cole, and scores of writers and crew members spoke their truths about how the creator of those shows had treated them; and partly because Buffy was a little blonde girl, and no matter how big or enduring the fandom, men will always try to diminish a young woman’s success.

Yeah, I said it.

Late Monday night, Deadline ran an ‘autopsy report’ from insiders at Hulu/the reboot, explaining why it didn’t work. I am very sorry to tell you that you’re going to get a crash course in network notes. They are brutal, opaque, and they almost never mean what they say they mean… which, sadly, can be industry standard.

Allegedly, one of the first complaints of the original pilot script for Buffy: New Sunnydale (an early version is floating online, but is definitively not what was shot) was that it read ‘too young’. So first I have to ask – for whom? You cast a 15-year-old so you’d have longevity in the role. You are recreating this show for a new generation, obviously; for the Xennials who grew up watching it, “young” is going to be nostalgic. For the new fans, it’s going to be a show they can get on board with and grow with. Am I wrong? Was anyone under the impression this show was going to be on opposite a grisly season of True Detective? What does “too young” mean in this context? Too young for who, Hulu?

Further, the writers of the pilot are Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, who have a long list of credits including Suits, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, and Poker Face. They know how to write young people, and they know how to spin a fun and quippy yarn with tons of murders. You knew who they were when you approved them to write the script, which makes me question… what is it you were hoping to feel that you aren’t?

I have a sneaking suspicion I know the answer, and I really don’t like it. Nobody has said this out loud, but ‘too young’ often coincides with the note ‘make it sexier’, which doesn’t literally mean sexier… except when it does. In today’s world where Gen Zs and Gen Alphas complain too much is about sex and romance and they wish there was more platonica, I can see the disconnect; the 2024 script has 15 year olds acting very 15, and given that the stars were also very young, there was no loophole for ogling young women in miniskirts but believing that was okay because “the actress is, like, 20, so…!”.

All that said, Hulu has the right to give notes and to make the show they want to make. They’re paying, and they know their audience, right? So – the pilot was rewritten to a 90-minute length, and to include more of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Buffy as opposed to just the new teen characters. This also served to address another reported note on the original pilot, that it “doesn’t take enough big swings. It feels small.”

This is another note that can really mean everything and nothing. I’ve had this note given, and it went like this: “We need something more, something bigger. Like this thing that happened to me in high school…”  (For the record, the thing that happened to this person in high school was NOT THAT GREAT, but in the context of television, where a 1 is Stephanie Tanner being stood up for a date and moping around the Full House living room, and a 10 is Ricky being the victim of homophobic violence on My So Called Life, this event was a 6. Mayyyyybe 6.5)

“Okay, I hear that you want more,” I would say. “What if we have some police violence, would that turn it up, maybe to an 8, 8.5?” No, no, not that much. But something. “Gosh, OK. Well, we could have the house blow up or some other accident – have one of our main characters die and shock everyone watching…” No! No we don’t want to go that far! “Okay, well – should we find out that one of the characters has a rough life at home, and so –” NO! Not like that. It’s just, in high school, this one thing happened, and…

…cue my eyes, and everyone else on the call’s eyes, glazing over as the exec described what happened in high school for the millionth time. “So – do you want me to just do what happened to you?” No, no, of course not! Like, whatever you want, you figure it out.” Sure.

Thanks for coming with me on that digression/therapy session – my point is that “doesn’t take enough big swings” is definitely subjective, and again, depends entirely on what the goal is for the show. Which brings us back to ‘who are we trying to reach, here?’

Let’s be real. The show was called Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It has always been niche, and those who were turned off by the title when they were young aren’t suddenly going to change their minds because 30 years have passed – the ‘legacy fans’ are going to show up, of course, but I don’t think we’re getting a whole bunch of new Millennial viewers based on… the promise that the show is now cooler and sexier. Right? Meanwhile, the actually young? The new audiences who would follow the show? They’ll find it because it’s for them. Because it speaks to them, and the outcasts onscreen reflect the way the audience sees themselves…

I say that about outcasts because – here’s the thing, 90% of the time when executives give notes like these, what they’re actually saying is “I want to be producing a show that is, in my mind, cooler than this. So make it cooler so I feel cool.” The other 10% of the time when it’s not about this, they usually find a better way to express it anyway.

It’s enraging, because the original BtVS wasn’t cool, and that was the *point*. The characters were outcasts, and that’s why they found each other. The situations they found themselves in meant they’d never be in the inner circle, and that’s where the stories came from. The people who loved the show – much like those who love ballet and opera, by the way, sorry but it’s still relevant – already knew their interests weren’t mainstream, and were far past trying to change that. Then a show like this comes along and affirms who they are? Yeah, of course you have fans for life.

So – Oscar-winning director, super-decorated writers, beloved legacy cast – it was all there, and they’d all agreed on a direction that was young, fresh, engaging, not super-dark and sexy (reportedly what Sarah Michelle Gellar was most adamant she didn’t want the revival to be.) So why were Craig Erwich and his team insistent on making this show something it was never supposed to be? One guess:

Yep, you’re right. It’s because money. And clout – because he wants to be the guy who rebooted a cool franchise at Hulu, and to get all the credit and accolades and more power. (Deadline reports that, after calling SMG on Friday night to tell her the show was off, Hulu announced a restructuring, and Erwich, who never got tired of telling SMG and co that he ‘didn’t get’ the show, has gotten a promotion and a portfolio expansion, so… good for him. More money is coming his way, I guess.)

But that’s not where good storytelling comes from. You don’t put money or explosions or sex onscreen in stories that don’t need them because they’re cool to someone, somewhere; you put them in when they need to be there to tell the story of the characters you’re talking about. But there are many execs – not just men, I should say – who feel like smaller stories just aren’t worth telling, or won’t hold the attention of an adult audience. And maybe they wouldn’t! But the devoted fan base of Buffy? Those media-savvy, mature Elder Millenials with disposable income? They started watching as teenagers. The show was for them, and that’s why it worked… so why wouldn’t you start young again? Give the show somewhere to go?

Anyway. That 90-minute pilot? Some say it was great, but according to some unnamed intel in the Deadline article, there were worries it was going to cost too much to shoot (...after they made the scope larger, natch) or “we weren’t sure the structure was going to hold”, or in one case, that it “still fell short of the high bar set by the original series.” Which – guys! The original show is now frequently named among some of the best TV ever made, and definitely dealt with mature themes in new and engaging ways, but …not at first! Season 1 had stories like “The swim team is turning into fish monsters!”

Again, these are all reasonable concerns about a pilot, but when they’ve asked you to make it bigger and then say it’s too big? Or nobody can put their finger on what was wrong with the pilot, per se, it feels like moving the goalposts. Because it’s clear that maybe nobody at Hulu was exactly sure why they were making it, or for whom. Because they were making it to make money. Reboots are whores’ series.

What’s most painful about this, of course, is that Sarah Michelle Gellar so famously said she had brushed off other opportunities to do a reboot – some of which, I bet, were more financially lucrative than a pilot in 2026. But she chose to do it because she believed in Chloe Zhao’s vision, and her rationale for why now was the time to bring the story back. That story zeal is long gone now, and it’s a safe bet that none of the women involved this round will be back, even as Deadline assures us there are still plans for a ‘hard reboot’ of the Buffy IP in a few years… shudder.

There are a lot of told-you-sos online, people who never wanted the series rebooted, and maybe they were right that this would always be a conflict of art and commerce. I don’t have to tell anyone that money is winning over art on the daily in Hollywood. But I’m reminded of Conan O’Brien here, of all people. We shouldn’t be cynical. We should believe the right stories will be told at the right time, and that the connections we have to the original show are still real and valid. But one lesson from the show’s earliest themes is still very relevant here: there’s a reason not to trust the popular kids.

RIP Buffy Summers and New Sunnydale. They probably would have saved the world… a lot. 

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