Fran Rubel Kuzui and Kaz Kuzui, who you may remember as the executive producers from the the Buffy and Angel credits, are looking into relaunching the Buffy franchise with another movie. Without Joss Whedon. No, seriously:
The new “Buffy” film, however, would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike. Vertigo and Kuzui are looking to restart the story line without trampling on the beloved existing universe created by Whedon, putting the parties in a similar situation faced by Paramount, J.J. Abrams and his crew when relaunching “Star Trek.”
Uhh… Yeah. Say what you will about Whedon, but the only reason anyone actually remembers that movie is the TV show. What can a Whedonless relaunch/remake do but piss off his base (aka the core of your possible audience) and ignite lots of internet ire?
…It’s totally going to happen, isn’t it?
UPDATE: Whedon’s response.
they are just stupid enough to try it. And hopefully everyone will boycott. At least Trek was rebooted with some connection to the original.
I’m probably just getting on the bandwagon by adding to the ire. And the reaction was much the same when Trek was first announced. But Joss was the magic to that series. Nope. Just nope.
So the reason the Trek reboot worked, first and foremost and the reason it was greenlighted was twofold:
1. Most of the original cast are retired or dead. You cannot do Geriatric Trek with Nimoy and Shatner alone.
2. The only other series in the franchise that had any mega-success has turned out to be the kiss of death in feature format.
Neither of these applies to Buffy. Now, Joss Whedon is not my Master. I find his schtick pretty consistent and it gets old REALLY fast (like within the running time of “Serenity” fast.) Buffy was amusing and for a couple seasons it was really good. Then it hit suckage hard and fast (it took even fewer seasons to suck than TNG or X-Files and that’s impressive because when they started to bite, they bit HARD.) But we have already seen Buffy as directed by studio consensus and it was not pretty. I can’t imagine shelling out to see it NOW.
Unless they get JJ Abrams to direct it. I’ve never even seen a full episode of “Lost” or “Alias” and he somehow may be my master now.