In case you missed yesterday’s news, it was announced that Atlas Entertainment and Warner Bros. will be “rebooting” Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the big screen. A new Buffy movie is planned for 2012–and Joss Whedon has nothing to do with it.
“There is an active fanbase eagerly awaiting this character’s return to the bigscreen,” says producer Charles Roven of Atlas Entertainment.
True, there are legions of passionate Buffy fans who are among the most devoted of any fandom. That would be the “active fanbase” Mr. Roven is referring to. But he’s got the “bigscreen” part all wrong. It was the small screen that established Buffy as a pop culture phenomenon, not that dreadful 1992 Kristy Swanson movie–proof that Hollywood ruins everything, even when Joss Whedon is involved.
The TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer may not have had a huge budget with cutting edge special effects, but its lack of polish was made up for by great writing, only made possible by a man who attained the creative freedom necessary to create his ideal vision. So revered is Buffy’s creator and so sacred is his source material that the idea of a new Buffy movie in anyone else’s hands just seems blasphemous.
So how could this possibly be a good idea?
Oh, I forgot. Warner Bros. only cares about money.
