The Perfect Buffy The Vampire Slayer Return Can Finally Happen
Sarah Michelle Gellar shocked the world recently when she declared her willingness to return to the world of Buffy. The actor has traditionally said she wouldn’t want to return, but recent projects like Dexter: Original Sin have convinced her there are clever ways to bring beloved characters and their worlds back. That still leaves the question of how to bring the series back, but that question was actually answered decades ago with a failed pilot: simply put, Buffy the Vampire Slayer needs to return as an animated series.
The First Buffy Animated Attempt
Back in 2004, one year after the live-action show ended, Joss Whedon released a four-minute presentation for Buffy: The Animated Series that was designed to help him sell a cartoon to any networks that would be interested (you can watch it in the video above if you’re interested). He had actually been working on the project since 2001, and he hoped the cool animation and returning actors like Anthony Stewart Head could help him sell this show, which was intended as a prequel set when the characters were still in high school.
The series never sold and Whedon said the project was dead in 2005, but with Gellar’s willingness to return, it’s time to bring the idea of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer animated show back to life. She notably didn’t return to voice the character for that 2004 presentation, nor did she reprise the role of Buffy Summers in the excellent Audible original Slayers: A Buffyverse Story. Now that she’s willing to come back, it’s important for a future showrunner to determine the best way to make that happen.
Why Animation Works Better
If Buffy the Vampire Slayer came back as a live-action series rather than an animated one, the biggest concern for any network would be the high production costs. In addition to all those nice sets and special effects, they’d have to pay for the legacy actors to return, and some of them may not like the idea of returning to a grueling production schedule. Done poorly, a live-action Buffy reboot would be like the Frasier revival, which notably brought back the title character but relegated the original ensemble cast to very occasional cameos (mercifully, that changed with Peri Gilpin’s robust Season 2 presence).
Fortunately, making Buffy the Vampire Slayer into an animated series solves both problems by making production cheaper even as it makes production much easier for the talent. One of the reasons that Audible snagged so many veteran Buffy stars for Slayers: A Buffyverse Story is that most actors find simply recording lines quite preferable to spending hours worrying over hair and makeup before shooting scenes into the wee hours. A Buffy cartoon would be similarly easy to record lines for, and the versatility of the format leaves things wide open for some creative writers.
Joss Whedon originally attempted to create a Buffy the Vampire Slayer animated prequel show, and that idea could still work if creators and fans wanted to use this cartoon to flesh out the Scoobies’ earlier adventures. However, it would be just as easy to set the cartoon in the present day and explore how the world changed when Buffy gave her superpowers to every potential Slayer in the world. If they wanted to go the X-Men ‘97 route and transform great comic arcs into episodes, Dark Horse’s killer Buffy comics created as new “seasons” of the original show would be a great starting point.
Speaking of X-Men ‘97, that show is proof that a Buffy the Vampire Slayer animated show could be successful while still exploring some very dark subject matter. Quality always wins out, and if we get a high-quality Buffy cartoon (with or without the controversial Whedon’s involvement), fans will come running. Sarah Michelle Gellar is ready to come back to the role that made her famous, and a cartoon adaptation may ultimately be our best bet to get some of the old magic back from one of the most groundbreaking franchises in television history.
Source: Variety
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