On her classic show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar‘s Buffy Summers fought the undead. In real life, the actress faced the death of her Buffy reboot at Hulu — and she is having a hard time with it.
Here is how Buffy: New Sunnydale went from a dream reboot two decades in the making, with Gellar starring and Oscar winner Chloé Zhao directing, to a discarded pilot. There were issues — as Deadline reported on Saturday, the original pilot was “not perfect”; some called it “not great.” Yet, after a well-received rewrite with a lot more Buffy Summers in it, no one expected the pass.
I hear virtually every day last week, the two studios on the Buffy reboot, 20th Television and Searchlight Television, touched base with the project’s producers and creative team, indicating that a pickup for the pilot starring Gellar and Ryan Kiera Armstrong seemed imminent after its writers, Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, had done a rewrite. (Hulu, 20th TV and Searchlight are all part of Disney.)
Then at 6 p.m. on Friday, Disney Television Group President Craig Erwich, who oversees Hulu Originals, called auspices to inform them that the project was not moving forward, sources said.
“I was in shock,” one person said of their reaction when they got the news, whose timing could not have been worse — with Gellar at SXSX for the premiere of her new movie, Ready or Not 2, produced by Searchlight, and Zhao attending Oscar weekend events leading to Sunday’s Academy Awards, where her latest movie Hamnet had 8 nominations, including for her as a director.
“No one saw this coming, including the head of Searchlight. And I got the call as we were stepping onto stage for the premiere of their own movie,” Gellar said in a strongly worded interview with People, in which she also called out an executive over the reboot’s axing. (More on that and the executive’s identity later.)
It is unclear why Hulu opted to make the calls on Friday night, with sources labeling the timing “misguided” and “terrible.” From what I hear, there wasn’t a hard deadline or options expiring, but it is true that those involved in the pilot had been waiting for awhile and wanted an answer.
It was just not the answer anyone expected.
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It was a year ago that Hulu gave a pilot order to Buffy: New Sunnydale, with Zhao, a self-professed lifelong Buffy fan, directing from a script written by Nora and Lilla Zuckerman (Poker Face). The green light capped years of development; in her People interview, Gellar said that Zhao had approached her with the idea four years ago, convincing her to finally say “yes” to revisiting her signature character, something she had resisted for years.
Armstrong was cast as the new slayer with Gellar’s Buffy Summers by her side, and the pilot went into production in late July.
“I loved the duality that we had with this new, younger slayer who was where Buffy was when the show started, and then we would pick up with where Buffy was now,” Gellar told People about the setup.
After the pilot was completed and delivered, according to multiple sources, Hulu’s main note was that it played too young, with some indicating that the streamer also felt the show was too “small.”
It is unclear how exactly the pilot went through development, green light, casting and production without such concerns being addressed. Armstrong is young; she was about 15 when she was cast. Geller was young in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer too; she was about 18 when she landed the pilot.
As for the scope of the show, I hear the initial business mandate was to keep the spirit of the original, which was done for the WB (and subsequently for UPN) on a modest budget.
After feedback from the streamer that the pilot did not take big enough swings, the Zuckermans set out to do a rewrite to address the notes, sources said.
I hear the new script was 90 minutes. It was more adult, featuring a lot more of Gellar’s Buffy, and was described as a more of a streaming than a network show.
According to sources, the rewrite was well received at both studios, 20th TV and Searchlight TV, triggering the internal talk of a pending pickup, with at least one executive in charge “putting everything on the line” for it, as one person put it.
In her People interview, Gellar singled out one executive. “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,” she said. “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 did not name the person; according to multiple sources, the executive Gellar was referring to is Erwich.
It is unclear what exactly Erwich meant by his comments, with some suggesting that he was referring to the fact that he wasn’t the demo for the series when he said that it “wasn’t for him.” (Still, those involved in the reboot agreed with Gellar’s general assessment of his take on the show.)
What is known is that Erwich made the decision not to proceed with the pilot. The reasons for the pass are fuzzy. Some say Hulu suggested that the rewritten version of the project was too expensive to shoot. Others indicate that it still fell short of the high bar set by the original series.
One source close to the project compared the situation to completing a $3M renovation only to find out that the house has foundation issues.
“Instead of fixing the foundation, you just walk away,” the person said about Hulu’s decision to not proceed with the reboot.
As Deadline reported, the hope is to get another take on the Buffy IP up and running within the next couple of years.
Under a restructuring announced today, Erwich, who oversees Hulu Originals and ABC Entertainment, also added oversight of 20th Television, run by Karey Burke. That is the studio which owns the Buffy IP, produced the original series and would be developing any future incarnations, likely again for Hulu.
