Over the weekend, Sarah Michelle Gellar left Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans stunned when she broke the bad news that Hulu had cancelled the highly-anticipated reboot from Chloé Zhao, called New Sunnydale. As the original TV show’s loyal fanbase have been mourning all week, the actress/producer shared her own reasons why she hopes the reboot doesn’t stay dead.
Gellar sat down with Andy Cohen’s radio show following Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale’s cancellation. When the host asked if she thinks there are “any other conversations going on” now that the reaction has been “so intense”, here’s how she responded:
I mean, I’m not there. I’m here, I don’t know. I will say that the fans are incredible. I mean they’re truly, like I said, they’re the reason why I wanted to do it in the first place. And you can’t not notice.
It must be heartbreaking to Sarah Michelle Gellar to see fans get so sad about the new Buffy series being cancelled after she spent so much time working on it as a producer and actor. The pilot for New Sunnydale was filmed back in August, but executives allegedly weren't impressed enough once they watched the first episode, calling the show too “small."
Could Hulu retrace their steps after all the outcry from enraged fans? Gellar isn’t sure, but as she brought up, it’s pretty impossible not to notice how many people were looking forward to the new Buffy series. One would hope that somebody would see the huge reaction to the cancellation and reconsider, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
Since the cancellation, Gellar said that there was an executive on the Buffy reboot who was “not a fan” of the original and “was proud” to constantly remind others involved that he’d “never seen the entirety of the series”. The actress never named who this executive was, but Deadline claims she was likely referring to Craig Erwich, who is the President of Disney Television Group, and directly oversees all Hulu Originals.
Since the cancellation news broke, new Buffy star Ryan Kiera Armstrong revealed what her character would have looked like, and was overwhelmed with comments from fans saying things like “@hulu count your days” and begging other streaming platforms to pick up the show. Another conversation that’s been happening lately concerns that fans want to see the pilot. But to that, Gellar said that she hopes it doesn’t get leaked because “it wasn’t done.”
New Buffy The Vampire Slayer episodes might not be on the way anytime soon, but you can stream the entire original show right now with a Hulu subscription. Also, you can catch Sarah Michelle Gellar in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, now in theaters.
