Sci-Fi Film and Television Developments

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

11/22/10 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer is getting the reboot in a new Hollywood movie, producers said on Monday.  Buffy tells of a teenage girl who learns her destiny is to chase and kill the living dead, originated as a 1992, B-movie starring Kristy Swanson as Buffy and became a cult hit on video and DVD.  By the late 1990s, it had morphed into a widely-watched television program of the same name with Sarah Michelle Gellar. The show made stars of Gellar, David Boreanaz, Alyson Hannigan and others.  "There is an active fan base eagerly awaiting this character's return to the big screen," Charles Roven of producer Atlas Entertainment said in a statement.  "Details of the film are being kept under wraps, but I can say, while this is not your high school Buffy, she'll be just as witty, tough, and sexy as we all remember her to be," Roven added. He called the new movie a "re-imagining" of the slayer.  Atlas is a co-producer along with Vertigo Entertainment. Warner Bros. will distribute. Whit Anderson is writing the screenplay.

5/26/09 - A new incarnation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is being developed for the big screen.  This version wouldn't involve series creator Joss Whedon, nor make use of such characters as Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike.  The movie is being developed by Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment and Fran Rubel Kuzui, the director of the original 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer film, and her husband, Kaz Kuzui, according to The Hollywood Reporter.  The new Buffy is being called a remake or relaunch, but not a sequel or prequel.  Kuzui and her Kuzui Enterprises have held on to the rights to Buffy since the beginning, when she discovered the Buffy script by then-unknown Whedon. She developed the script while her husband put together the financing to make the poorly received 1992 movie, which was released by Fox.  Kuzui later teamed with Gail Berman, then president of Sandollar Television, bringing back Whedon to make the TV series, which was produced by Fox TV and launched on The WB in 1997 (it later moved to UPN). Kuzui and Sandollar received executive producer credits on Buffy and its spinoff, Angel.  The parties are meeting with writers and hearing takes and later will look for a home for the project. The producers do not rule out Whedon's involvement but have not yet reached out to him.

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