When the news broke that Hulu had decided not to move forward with Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale, Sarah Michelle Gellar took to Instagram to share a diplomatic video message that left the door open to potentially revisiting the role down the line.
However, with fans making no secret of their unhappiness on social media, the actress has now talked more about how she's feeling in the wake of the news. She also revealed some of the opposition this Buffy the Vampire Slayer revival faced from those in charge.
"No one saw this coming," Gellar told People (via SFFGazette.com). "We had an executive on our show who was not only not a fan of the original, was proud to constantly remind us that they had never seen the entirety of the series and how it wasn't for them."
"The fans are why I wanted to do it in the first place," she continued. "To thank them, to show them, and to be there for them, because that's what Buffy was about. Buffy was about chosen family, and that you may feel like you don't belong in the world, but there's someone out there that sees you. And for me, it's always been about me seeing those fans. This past weekend, it's been about those fans seeing me."
Deadline has since shared several additional insights into the project's demise, confirming that the cast and crew really were surprised when the plug was pulled. While the original pilot was flawed (more on that below), rewrites had brought it closer to where it needed to be.
Nora and Lilla Zuckerman did a fresh pass on the show's pilot that also starred Skeleton Crew's Ryan Kiera Armstrong as Buffy's daughter, and a pickup looked likely. Until, on Friday at 6pm, Disney Television Group President Craig Erwich, who oversees Hulu Originals, decided to drive a stake through New Sunnydale's heart.
Erwich is reportedly the unnamed executive mentioned by Gellar above, and insiders posit that he felt the new iteration was either too expensive to shoot or that it simply fell short of the original series.
The report adds, "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."
"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," it continues. "I hear the new script was 90 minutes. It was more adult, featuring a lot more of Gellar’s Buffy, and was described as more of a streaming than a network show."
Ultimately, we may never know whether the right decision was made. There have been some script leaks on social media, which, if real, sound pretty terrible.
However, if improvements were made and Hulu still didn't want to make Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale a reality, it seems to suggest that there were issues that Erwich and other executives couldn't or wouldn't look beyond.