Sarah Michelle Gellar on cancellation of proposed Buffy revival: "No one saw this coming"

This past weekend, Sarah Michelle Gellar went to social media and released a short video announcing that Hulu had decided to not move ahead with its planned revival of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the video, she is obviously emotional, even saying, “If the apocalypse comes…you can still beep me.”

Now that the dust has settled a bit on that bit of bad news, Gellar has come forward with more information about the decision, and how it was conveyed to her and to the series’ Academy Award-winning director Chloe Zhao.

Hulu and Searchlight Television were working with Gellar and Zhao on the planned series, and the pilot episode had already been filmed, with Ryan Kiera Armstrong as a new slayer. On Friday, March 13, as Gellar prepared to step onstage at SXSW to promote Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (also under the Searchlight banner), she got the call.

As if that timing weren’t bad enough, Zhao was told about the decision only two days before the Academy Awards, for which she had been nominated as Best Director for Hamnet. It was the worse possible time for the news, and hopefully that timing was not deliberate.

According to Gellar, “No one saw this coming, including the head of Searchlight.” She told People Magazine that one person was responsible for killing the highly anticipated series, an executive 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.”

The one bright spot about all of this for Gellar was the outpouring of love and support from the many fans who were, obviously, very disappointed. Buffy is still beloved, and remembered as one of the best series of the 1990s. Gellar said the fans were the reason the revival was even happening, and “how do you do a show that’s beloved with someone that doesn’t love it?”

True words indeed, and as a super-fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer since season one in 1997, I am really sad that the show’s fate was put in the hands of a non-fan. It remains to be seen if the revival may still happen elsewhere. Since it technically belongs to Disney, it’s not like another network or streaming service can just pick it up right away. But, given that Sarah Michelle Gellar and Chloe Zhao were so passionate about it, they might be able to make it happen.