Last week, we reported on some fairly shocking news about Hulu’s reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Despite all expectations, the pilot episode was not picked up for a series order. This is despite the talents of Academy Award-winning director Chloé Zhao behind the camera. Even the reappearance of the original Buffy, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, didn’t help. At the time of the initial report, all we could do was speculate.
Now, more information is coming out as to why the pilot got staked through the chest.
Please keep in mind that all of the information is speculative and comes from reports from people close to the show. That’s why when we report that part of the problem may have been Zhao herself, we have to take it in context. Zhao is an incredibly talented director who would normally not find herself behind the pilot of a TV vampire show. It just so happens that Zhao is a huge Buffy fan and wanted to direct this project. But what happens when you have an artistic auteur filming the pilot for your Buffy revival?
The Director and Writers
Some reports allege that Zhao was not a good fit. They stated that the pilot was “under-shot” and the cast “under-directed.” What does that mean? Well, to put it another way, a pilot can’t be subtle. A pilot has to come through the door with guns blazing. It has to establish characters, exposition the hell out of things, and let the audience know what they’re getting. Allegedly, the pilot didn’t do this, and part of that blame is being placed on Zhao and her more subtle, cinematic storytelling.
Another chunk of blame is being placed on the writers, Nora and Lilla Zuckerman. It would appear that Buffy herself isn’t in the pilot until effectively the end, like an after-credit sequence. She’s living a life completely removed from being the Slayer. She’s working an office job and only hears about problems in her old Sunnydale thanks to an influx of insurance claims. That ties into the episode’s events, where the new Slayer, played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong, discovers her powers. She discovers them at effectively the same time as the hellmouth effectively reopens.
The Pilot Itself
The episode introduces us to her and her friends, who form a new squad of “Scoobies” to tackle the supernatural menace. This is where the reason the pilot wasn’t picked up for a season order gets complicated. Hulu execs apparently had problems with the premise; they didn’t like the lack of Buffy, and they felt the show was skewing too young. Both of these could be legitimate gripes. Fans have seen new Slayers introduced into the series. Hell, season seven introduced a whole new crop of “potentials” with Slayer abilities. They didn’t really go over well. It’s also fair to say the show should have been aged up. The original group of Buffy viewers, seemingly the target demographic, aren’t the teenagers they used to be.
PEOPLE Magazine
Hulu could have had the pilot rewritten and reworked. This obviously didn’t happen. Why didn’t it, though? The adage about not “throwing good money after bad” has popped up. It could just be the case, though, where the combination of the shot pilot and the script left a bad taste in the mouths of the execs. Gellar herself pointed out that one of the executives, Craig Erwich, was openly hostile about the show. He would say he never watched all of the original series, and that the show wasn’t his kind of show.
The End Result
If all this is true or some version of the truth at least, then what do we have? We’ve got a subdued pilot, a script that doesn’t play to the key demographic, and a hostile exec who seems itching for a reason not to greenlight it. That doesn’t add up to a recipe for a redo, but a complete scrapping. And we may never actually know the truth. If Erwich was just opposed to the show from the start, he may not even be open about why he scrapped it. It could be that he didn’t see the value in the IP and wanted to nuke it regardless.
Maybe this reboot was a bad idea to begin with. Not everything needs a reboot. However, it’s still sad when all the talent and hope behind something like this gets quashed. Maybe we’ll see more Buffy in some form, but for now, it looks like this show is thoroughly dusted.
