Big news out of San Diego Comic-Con for Joss Whedon: The creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is overseeing a reboot of his landmark television series, acting as executive producer while Monica Owusu-Breen (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Midnight, Texas) will write the script and serve as showrunner. The most significant detail of the reboot news, which comes from The Hollywood Reporter, is that the new Slayer will be black.
While there isn’t too much substantial information about the reboot, with Whedon still working with Owusu-Breen to develop the script, THR did share some details:
The new version, sources say, will be contemporary and build on the mythology of the original. Like today’s world, the new Buffy will be richly diverse, with some aspects of the series, like the flagship, seen as metaphors for issues facing society today.
No word yet on who will play the new Slayer.
In a previous interview in March 2017, tied to the beloved series’ 20th anniversary, Whedon addressed the then-rumors of a reboot as well as his own misgivings. “I see a little bit of what I call monkey’s paw in these reboots,” he said at the time. “You bring something back, and even if it’s exactly as good as it was, the experience can’t be. You’ve already experienced it, and part of what was great was going through it for the first time. You have to meet expectations and adjust it for the climate, which is not easily. Luckily most of my actors still look wonderful, but I’m not worried about them being creaky. I’m more worried about me being creaky as a storyteller. You don’t want that feeling that you should have left before the encore.”
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Perhaps that’s part of why a new writer will serve as showrunner. In addition to the aforementioned series above, Owusu-Breen has written and produced countless episodes of Alias, Lost, Fringe, and Charmed. Most recently, she was co-creator and EP of Midnight, Texas, based on Charlaine Harris’ book series. Original producers Gail Berman, Joe Earley, Fran Kazui and Kaz Kazui are also onboard as EPs.
No network is currently attached to the project, though 20th Century Fox Television is producing (having also produced the original series). The plan is to pitch the reboot to streaming and cable outlets.
I know reboots are a thing that producers love to do since there is the idea that there is a built-in market and if someone loved the last iteration that they will have to see the next one. And money.
But here I think instead of a reboot why not tell another story in the same universe. Use an older Slayer, or one of the Slayer candidates from after the spreading of the power, or something else. But tell a new story in an old universe.
With that said i will at least check out the new show when it is made available.
Agreed, and that may be the way they go (one hopes), especially if Joss has intimated reusing any of the original cast members. I would love to see that, but would be only mildly interested in a full reboot and rebuild. Donald Trump is obviously a Kaos demon after all.
Of course, they couldn’t go with the gender-swap reboot for Buffy, so they have a black lead instead. It’s good to have representation, but how can it be the only selling point? The second slayer we’ve met in the original show was Kendra, so a black slayer is not exactly a new thing… A reboot could be fun, and I’m all for a black lead, but I think it would have been better to announce a reboot with Jane Doe as the lead, who happens to be a black actress, rather than announcing a reboot with a black lead and no other information.
As for a reboot rather than a spin-off, the Buffyverse had got so big that rebooting doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
I remember when I used to be impresssed by Joss Whedon.
Oh well.Good times….
Rebooting Buffy is a terrible, lazy, sloppy idea. Doing another Buffy series with a high school kid who just happens to be black becoming the Slayer – in a world where there are thousands of women who twenty years ago acquired Slayer-speed and strength – that would be an interesting new concept for a series. But… oh well. Good times.
It sometimes seems that every US film or series lead must be either white (of European ancestry) or black. The latter is called “representation”.
5: Buffy was your epitome White Privilege Girl: her parents were well off (Buffy didn’t have any money worries until after Joyce died): she was blonde, a cheerleader, thin, she and her friends all went to college, Xander was her only blue-collar buddy. But she lived in a network of friends and family.
Kendra was a reversal: kidnapped from her parents, having access to nothing except what the Watchers let her have, no privilege of race or class or social standing, no friends.
Reverse again: the new Slayer twenty years on (as it should be) is a black girl whose mum works three minimum-wage jobs just to keep them eating and paying rent, who couldn’t afford to be a cheerleader or do anything that involves extra cos, who goes to a bad school in a poor neighbourhood. Her Watcher is a black Brit whose parents came to the UK on the Windrush, who speaks English with an Oxford accent.
Whedon could have done a lot with this. But I’m not really interested in Buffy-rebooted back to the 1990s. I want to see 21st-century Slayer where a vampire staking shows up on twitter with hashtag #didIjustseethat?
He’s not even slightly trying now, is he? Lets call this what it is, a cheap lousy cash in to land his some lucre and try and scrub his stained reputation of his past indiscretions. Sorry, Joss. No, just no.
jcarnall: Your “reverse again” is kind of what I did when I expanded out Nikki Wood’s story in my Buffy novel Blackout. (That’s the Slayer Spike killed on the subway and whose coat he took.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@6/jcarnall: Or she could be a Mexican immigrant girl. What baffles me is that the alternative to white is always black, even though there’s half a world of people out there who are neither.
@6, I’m pretty sure Buffy’s so called privilege was kind of the point. She matched the profile for horror movie victims. Now of course skinny white cheerleading types are cast as villains.
Personally I would love to see the new Slayer be an American Indian. It has not been done and their culture is old and steeped in all kinds of folklore. You could really get some kick ass ideas from them. What say you?
@11 After the roasting JK Rowling got, I think that Native American culture is comprehensively off the table for the foreseeable future. I cannot imagine that even someone as cocksure in their own sense of righteousness as Whedon would be willing to go there. And fandom liked JK Rowling.
How about making the new slayer trans ?
‘Once in every generation a girl is born-‘
‘I Am Not A Girl!’
@13 Make the slayer trans, so she has to say she is a girl despite the watchers and her parents want to think. Since the slayer line supposedly travels through the soul, that makes more sense than the primacy of biological sex. It also opens up possibilities about how transwomen slayers got handled in history, examining the dirty secrets of the society of watchers. Just how many trans slayers were killed for being trans, that has far more applicability to the current climate.
It would be a minefield but it would also be different and original.
@15 Three reasons why it will never happen, right there :)
@16, Sadly true.
@6, isn’t making the black Slayer the daughter of a poor single parent kind of stereotypical?
My first reaction was: “great idea!” But after reading the comments I find my enthusiasm beginning to cool. Instead of continuing the Buffyverse, Whedon is just going to pretend it never happened?
In any case, in a “dark“ reboot of Buffy, I’m guessing that the Slayers Council is evil, while the vampires are misunderstood victims of prejudice.
Sometimes racially restrictive casting may make sense, like when you’re casting Shaka Zulu. In this case, I’m not so sure. Even before he starts auditioning, Whedon rules out, what, 87% of the talent pool?
It’s worth noting that, when Whedon cast the original show, if he had stuck to his original conception of Buffy as big and strong, he would never have cast Sarah Michelle Gellar.
When the makers of Wonderfalls were casting a young shoplifter, their intent was to avoid casting a minority in the role because of the stereotyping issue. But as it happened, the best young actor to present himself during the auditions turned out to be black. So they took their courage in their hands, and cast him anyway.
I’m getting very tired of this penchant for changing an established character into some other sex/colour/other just because….
Have a little originality. If you want to show the world how relevant and wonderful a black girl/woman can be then create a story with a wonderful relevant black girl/woman. Don’t think that hijacking an established character and painting them black is edgy or relevant. It isn’t. It’s just lazy and money-grabbing. And anyone with a single, solitary brain cell isn’t fooled by it.
Let’s see some originality. It’ll be a nice change.
If one actually reads the Hollywood Reporter article, the signals are actually kind of mixed. We’re told the new Slayer will be black, that the setting will be “contemporary”, and the clear implication is that she will be called “Buffy”…and yet, the description says that the new show “will build on the mythology of the original”, and Whedon in an earlier interview is quoted as talking about his actors still looking wonderful, strongly suggesting the prospect of recurring or cameo appearances by members of the original cast.
On balance, what this feels like is more a sequel series than a reboot/remake — in particular, it’s interesting that the only character discussed is the new Slayer herself. That tends to suggest an entirely new set of “Scoobies” is contemplated, which would tend to support the idea of a “next gen” series rather than a pure remake.
I am going with John @20 in this.
I don’t think this will rewrite the original Buffy story, and I think the ending of the original show left enough openings for a sequel (remember Giles mentioning there are multiple Hellmouths).
As for original cast members appearing, I am not sure how many of them are still acting or interested in it, but I saw Eliza Dushku appear in Bull last year, and Faith appearing as a veteran Slayer would work just fine, probably better than Buffy.
On the title of the show, I can see why networks would want the name Buffy in it. That could be explained away as Buffy being the last single Slayer, making her name into a title for all Slayers following. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened.
It suddenly hit me, enough years have passed for the new Buffy to have been named after the old Buffy.
It’s plausible to assume that dozens of girl babies in Sunnydale would have been named “Buffy” during the years Buffy Summers was saving lives there.
I don’t know if this new reboot will be a hit or not. But I get the feeling that many don’t want it to work. So perhaps it won’t.
Here’s a radical idea: Try doing something new and original instead of rebooting a series as an obvious cash grab.
Reboots have always struck me as unnecessary and lazy.
For example with Ghostbusters, why not women setting up their own franchise somewhere other than NYC? Because that would require a completely new script ?
I’ve never understood this attitude; applied consistently, it would mean that it would be lazy and unnecessary ever to mount a new production of a Shakespeare play, and that no one should read more than one version of the King Arthur legends.
As KRAD points out from time to time, it’s not ideas that matter in writing; it’s execution. The same principle surely applies in performance-based media. To give a couple of specific examples — for all its limitations, there’s much good in the Rankin-Bass screen adaptation of The Hobbit, and for all its excesses, Peter Jackson’s big-screen trilogy adds interesting material to that story. And the Buffy television series was itself a remake of the earlier feature film, and by most accounts turned out to be much better-executed than the earlier work.
And I had a hell of a lot of fun for several years right here in Portland, where a crew of inexperienced but increasingly dedicated amateur players staged “Trek in the Park” theatricals using the scripts of several of the landmark episodes of original-series Star Trek.
Hell, most of Shakespeare’s plays were reboots or rewrites of known stories.
However, Buffy wasn’t a remake of the film, it was a sequel to it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@26 Sometimes things go so wrong that the only way to solve it is with a reboot too. A lot of the time a reboot is lazy, like if it is the same creator doing it in a Queeg like attempt to capture past glory and cred, but sometimes someone new needs to come and sweep away a screw up; like the 2015 Star Wars reboot which wiped away the old convoluted EU which was increasingly full of bad mistakes, or the 2020s reboots of Doctor Who and Star Wars.
#27/28: KRAD is right about the Buffy movie and series; OTOH, the corollary here is that current usage of “reboot” is less precise – which is one of the reasons it’s hard to tell exactly what Whedon & company have in mind in the present instance.
#25. You’re not wrong for thinking that. Shakespeare aside, Hollywood reboots and remakes often do seem unnecessary and lazy precisely because they’re not bold enough to justify their existence. Had the new Ghostbusters taken a different path instead of constantly tipping its hat to the original (Did they think going again with three whites and one black character was some particular racial formula they needed to follow? Why not a different makeup? Why not an inverse? Why not more characters? Really, guys?) it may have fared better. Of course, having a funnier script and not being attacked by misogynists would have helped, too.
If a reboot, whatever one means by that, is actually good all is forgiven. Regretably few are that good and many seem unnecessary.
When I heard of Whedon’s new show ‘The Nevers’, I thought “Excellent, here is the new Buffy!”. And I STILL think that.
This Buffy reboot, on the other hand, seems pointless, ridiculous, and destined for well-deserved failure. The only good part is that they will probably start re-showing the original.
I agree, rebooting entire Buffy series just to replace lead with African-American is a weak premise. However creating a vampire Slayer show set in Buffy universe just set 20 years after (or before) with a new lead who just happened to be named Buffy is a better idea.
If so, how they are going to address multiple Slayer problem since a whole lot if them would be active, some good some bad, as humans are, that would mean Buffy is not that special anymore.
Let’s wait and see before passing judgement. A new Buffy could be good.
You just have to have Faith.
Sometimes racially restrictive casting may make sense, like when you’re casting Shaka Zulu.
I’ve seen a very good production of Henry V with a black actor playing Henry. I’ve seen a Japanese actor playing Titus Andronicus and a West Indian playing Pericles and a white actor playing Cleopatra. I don’t see why Shaka Zulu couldn’t be white. His story doesn’t have anything to do with race; it’s about the rise of a ruthless dictator and highly successful military leader after the death of his father, and against competition from his half-brothers.
Having a white actor playing, say, Othello or Martin Luther King would be wrong because a big part of their stories are about them, as black men, interacting with white people. (Having a black actor playing Senator Bilbo would be just as wrong, you’d think, but if you can have black actors playing white plantation owners who were fighting to preserve their right to own black slaves in Hamilton maybe it would be OK.)
Anthony Quinn and Alec Guinness are great in Lawrence of Arabia, but in a film about Arabs interacting with Europeans the Arabs should have been played by Arab actors.
But Shaka barely met any white people in his life (the occasional traveller aside). So, yes, have a white Shaka. Why not?
@35 Because there’s a significant tradition of attributing African achievements to white people. Casting a white person as Shaka Zulu would imply that a black person couldn’t be a highly successful military leader.
It would also infringe on the one genre where black people get high profile acting roles: biopics of black historical figures. Until black people can regularly get cast as generic action stars, it’s not cool to cast white people as black historical figures.
OK, good point. Until the day (if it ever comes) when Denzel Washington and Will Smith and Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L Jackson and Lawrence Fishburne and John Boyega and Jamie Foxx can regularly get cast as generic action stars, we’d better lay off.
You could still have an Asian Shaka, though.
@37/ajay: Good one!
If the classic miniseries starring Henry Cele and Robert Powell is to be believed, Shaka had significant interactions — indeed, an alliance — with whites. His psychology and his military innovations were steeped in the culture of the Zulu.
A rule of thumb I suggest is: don’t confuse the audience unnecessarily. In the case of Shakespeare, the audience understands only about half of the dialogue as it is. Bad: casting actors of different races as brothers. (I’m talkin’ to you, Keanu Reeves!) Good: clarifying who is who by, say, casting the Montagues as black and the Capulets as white.
On the stage, of course, where human actors sometimes portray lions, audiences accept that what they are seeing is more stylized than realistic.
In the case of New Buffy, my point was that if they specify the race of the actor in advance they make it less likely that they will find the best possible Buffy.