Sarah Michelle Gellar blames one single guy for Hulu passing on Buffy The Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale.
As you no doubt know by now, the hotly anticipated reboot of Buffy The Vampire Slayer was canceled by the streaming service Hulu late last week.
The news came as a shock to many (well, maybe not to pilot director and executive producer Chloé Zhao, as you can read here), mainly because it seemed like the whole thing was a done deal; the pilot was shot, revisions by writers Nora and Lilla Zuckerman had been undertaken to tweak the format, and original star Sarah Michelle Gellar was still on board, reprising her iconic role and executive producing.
But despite early reports that the pilot “wasn’t perfect”, the consensus seems to be that the reboot, titled Buffy The Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale, was a slam dunk – a revival of a beloved and critically acclaimed series with both the original star involved and some serious muscle behind the camera is as close to a sure thing as you can get.
But in a new interview with People, Sarah Michelle Gellar has revealed her suspicions about what went down in the C suite – and according to her, it all comes down to one executive.
“We had an executive on our show who was not only not a fan of the original,” Gellar said. “But was proud to constantly remind us that he had never seen the entirety of the series and how it wasn’t for him.
“That’s very hard when you’re taking a property that is as beloved as Buffy, not just to the world, but to me and Chloé. So that tells you the uphill battle that we had been fighting since day one, when your executive is literally proud to tell you that he didn’t watch it.”
Gellar rather diplomatically doesn’t name the suit in question, but Deadline says that multiple sources have fingered Craig Erwich, President of Disney Television Group, as the culprit.
As we’ve noted before, Hulu are keen to do something with the Buffy property, so expect to see something Slayer-shaped down the track. But maybe not as soon as we might like.
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