Sarah Michelle Gellar is detailing how Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao changed her mind about a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” reboot.
Gellar, who has publicly been against a revival for years, officially is set to reprise her titular role as Buffy Summers for a new Hulu series, with Zhao directing the pilot. “Poker Face” scribes Nora and Lilla Zuckerman are writing the show, which hails from 20th Television and Searchlight TV where Zhao has a first-look deal. Both Gellar and Zhao will executive produce the series, along with original executive producer (and music icon) Dolly Parton. “Buffy” creator and writer Joss Whedon has no involvement in the reboot.
“Every pitch I heard was just like, ‘Let’s just do “Buffy” again,’” Gellar told Elite Daily of why she finally decided to agree to a revival. “Why? But the passion that [Zhao] came to me with, what she wanted to do with the show and the character, and why ‘Buffy’ is needed now — it was the first time where I thought, ‘OK, there’s a reason.’”
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” aired on the WB for five seasons from 1997 to 2001 before moving to UPN for two more seasons. The series also landed spinoff “Angel” from 1999 to 2004.
Gellar said that the revival has been in the works for four years. “We won’t do it unless it’s 100 percent right and there’s 100 percent a reason,” she added. “The whole point of an antihero is to be a hero for the people who don’t fit in the box, the people who aren’t like everybody else. That’s who I want to tell stories for.”
And while not much else is known about the revival, Gellar confirmed that any loglines or casting rumors are false. “Those are all fake characters,” she said. “That thing that got released is all fake.”
Gellar teased during “The Drew Barrymore Show” in 2024 that she was inspired by other early 2000s revival series to revisit “Buffy.” “It’s funny, I always used to say no, because it’s in its bubble and it’s so perfect,” she said. “But watching ‘Sex and the City’ and seeing ‘Dexter,’ and realizing there are ways to do it, definitely does get your mind thinking, ‘Well, maybe.’ […] And it makes you realize that in this world, we need those heroes, I think, more so than ever.”
In the meantime before “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” 2.0, Zhao was directing “Hamnet” based on Maggie O’Farrell novel about William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes. Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley star.
