If we weren’t gagged enough as it was with Sarah Michelle Gellar’s guest judge slot on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, we’re just as gagged to find out the reboot for her iconic Buffy the Vampire Slayer show is still in the works.
But first, let’s quickly talk about the source of this new information, which is none other than Dolly Parton, who apparently served as an uncredited producer for the entire show and the movie via her Sandollar Productions company that she co-founded with Sandy Gallin.
Now that we know how Parton is attached to Buffy, let’s talk about her recent interview with Business Insider where she admitted that the reboot for the 1990s classic cult television series is actually still in the works.
“They’re still working on that,” she admitted, though did not give any other details. “They’re thinking about bringing it back and revamping it.”
Puns aside, this isn’t the first discussion about rebooting the fan-favorite series, which also went to live on as a comic book series and recently included an audiobook, Slayers: A Buffyverse Story, written by former star Amber Benson, who played one half of the sapphic couple Willow and Tara who broke boundaries with their relationship. It also starred the voices of a number of original Buffy actors, including Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia and James Marsters as Spike.
The Hollywood Reporterfirst spilled news of a potential Buffy movie reboot, with the original movie director Fran Rubel Kuzui and her husband, Kaz at the helm. More notably, and the reboot Parton is likely referring to, is the 2018 Deadline report that said showrunner Joss Whedon and screenwriter Monica Owusu-Breen were working toward rebooting the show with a Black lead.
However, all talk of the show’s potential went to the wayside when several former Buffy stars and various people who had worked with Whedon came forward and alleged a toxic work environment.
In regard to Parton’s involvement with the show, she admitted that most of her work was done “just conversing back and forth” and that she “had to give more people more credit on Buffy the Vampire Slayer than me. A lot of people did so much sweat on that. That little show did great.”
We don't know the full status of anything yet, but we know we're definitely here for more stories in the Buffyverse, one way or the other.