{"id":480819,"date":"2026-03-17T18:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T18:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/480819\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T18:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T18:50:08","slug":"sarah-michelle-gellar-explains-why-buffy-reboot-was-scrapped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/480819\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Michelle Gellar Explains Why ‘Buffy’ Reboot Was Scrapped"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSarah Michelle Gellar<\/a> is detailing what went wrong with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/a> reboot, and says one executive is to blame for the show not moving forward.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actress was set to reprise her iconic role in a new version of the show from Oscar-winning Hamnet director\u00a0Chlo\u00e9 <\/a>Zhao that was being made for Hulu<\/a> and Searchlight Television, titled Buffy: New Sunnydale. On Friday, Gellar shared the news that the project was not moving forward<\/a>, citing Hulu for the decision.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow in a new interview with People<\/a>, Gellar criticized the decision to cancel the reboot, and also the timing of the decision, which came on the eve of Zhao going to the Oscars (where Zhao had received two nominations).<\/p>\n

\n\tGellar says one executive who made a point of saying he never liked Buffy scrapped the show.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe 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\u2019t for him,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s very hard when you\u2019re taking a property that is as beloved as\u00a0Buffy, not just to the world, but to me and Chlo\u00e9. 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\u2019t watch it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Gellar declined to name the executive, Disney Television Group president Craig Erwich was the ultimate decision-maker, sources confirm.<\/p>\n

\n\tGellar says she spoke to Zhao about the decision. \u201cChlo\u00e9 and I are feeling the same things. Disappointment. We don\u2019t want to let the fans down. That hurts. Saddened at how it was handled and when it was handled. But I just said to Chlo\u00e9, and I was very specific, I said, \u2018Sunday night, you put that crown on and you walk that red carpet and you take in all that love for what you worked for and forget the other stuff.\u2019 It\u2019s important to me that this doesn\u2019t take away from what we achieved and what she\u2019s achieved. And there\u2019s always so [much] more to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actress added that when she was on the set, she thought the new version was really working, including a new Slayer played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLet me tell you, nobody saw this coming,\u201d she said. \u201cThe dialogue flew off the tongue. When I was on set, it was craziness. It was like, \u2018Oh, we\u2019re here. We\u2019re doing this.\u2019 I loved the duality that we had this new, younger slayer who was where Buffy was when the show started, and then we would pick up with where Buffy was now \u2026 And I\u2019d like to use this moment also to say that Ryan Kiera Armstrong is a superstar. I\u2019m gutted that no one will see her as a slayer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut sources counter that the pilot (which was written by Nora and Lilla Zuckerman) simply wasn\u2019t very strong. There was a rewrite in an attempt to salvage things, but ultimately Disney\/Hulu decided not to reshoot the pilot or order Buffy to series. Sources say producers wanted a decision by the end of last week and, when it was made, Gellar took to social media to announce the news. But Disney would have preferred to hold off on the revelation until after the Oscars to handle the situation more delicately.<\/p>\n

\n\tBuffy was a beloved 1990s cult classic created by Joss Whedon that ran for seven seasons. There have been previous efforts to revive the series, though they haven\u2019t had original series star Gellar on board. <\/p>\n

\n\tA representative for Hulu had no immediate comment, though a statement obtained by People noted that because Disney owns the Buffy IP, the project cannot be shopped elsewhere. <\/p>\n

\n\tGellar stars in the horror sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which opens this weekend. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u2014 Tony Maglio contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarah Michelle Gellar is detailing what went wrong with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, and says one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[8354,6491,96,21007,13770,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-480819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-buffy-the-vampire-slayer","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-hulu","tag-sarah-michelle-gellar","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}