Hulu Pulled The Plug on a High-Profile Reboot … Does It Hate Me Specifically?

The Buffy reboot is six feet under

Sarah Michelle Gellar’s new movie “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” opens in theaters this weekend. Director Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture in January and was nominated for eight Oscars.

So you’d think this would be the perfect time to promote their next collaborative project, rebooting the beloved “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” franchise with Gellar reprising her titular role and Zhao directing.

But Hulu had other ideas. The streaming service blindsided fans and cast members alike last week by pulling the plug on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale,” which was supposed to premiere later this year.

I was excited to see what would become of this project, so it bummed me out when I heard the news. Hulu hadn’t released any promotional materials or trailers or anything, so I actually had a feeling the project was being delayed, but I didn’t think it would be canceled entirely.

What went wrong? Let’s dive into the details.

Doesn’t Hollywood love a reboot?

You’d think that a reboot like “New Sunnydale” would have an easy go of things at Disney, Hulu’s parent company. Disney loves IP, and has been leaning hard into remakes for at least the past decade. It’s been serving audiences completely unnecessary live-action reboots of animated classics like “Lilo & Stitch,” “Aladdin,” and “The Lion King” ever since “Cinderella”‘s success in 2015. Disney isn’t afraid of butchering an old classic for the sake of higher box office numbers.

But not all remakes, reboots, and reimaginings have to be soulless. Take Netflix’s live action “One Piece,” for example. Its recent second season has an astounding 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Netflix’s creative staff put a lot of care into the way they reimagined the franchise, and their hard work paid off with a colorful and entertaining homage to the original.

Not to compliment Netflix too much. Its “Fate: The Winx Saga” was, to put it generously, an insult to “Winx Club” fans and the original story. (Seriously. Why couldn’t the live-action “Winx” be as good as the live-action “One Piece?” These things keep me up at night.)

But would “New Sunnydale” have been a “One Piece?” Or a “Fate: The Winx Saga?” Since Hulu didn’t give the series a chance to air, we’ll never know.

What was “New Sunnydale?”

Now, to be fair, “New Sunnydale” was not a live-action remake of a beloved animated property. I know that label applies to every reboot I’ve mentioned so far. Instead, “New Sunnydale” was meant to be a continuation of a live-action series. Sequels—especially sequels to franchises that ended 20+ years ago—are harder to sell.

It reminds me a lot of “Willow,” the series Disney+ aired in 2022 as a sequel to the 1988 Lucasfilm movie. I loved the series, even though I’d never heard of the cult classic franchise before. But Disney lost faith in the project and cancelled the show before it could really take off, even going so far as to delete it from its service in 2023. (I’m still bitter about this injustice three years later.)

And that was a show that was welcoming to new viewers. Sarah Michelle Gellar herself admitted that “New Sunnydale” would “absolutely not” be approachable to new audiences. So to get the most out of the experience, audiences would have had to watch 144 episodes of the original show.

Yeah, 144, I know. It’s so weird to think that just twenty-some years ago, TV shows filmed 22 episodes per season and aired them every year for several seasons straight. Modern shows tend to be just six or eight episodes long and then get canceled after two seasons (spread across six years).

So maybe that’s why Hulu thought “New Sunnydale” wouldn’t sell. “Buffy” is a relic of a different (some would say less restrictive) era of television, and was too hard for new fans to pick up. But that’s not the full story.

Why was “New Sunnydale” canceled?

I definitely think that the show’s nature—as a sequel, not a reboot or a starting point for new fans—was a factor. But it’s actually more complicated than that, and there’s personal drama behind the show’s cancellation as well.

According to Sarah Michelle Gellar, one of Hulu’s executives was against the project, and “not a fan of the original.” The Hollywood Reporter claims that the decision-maker in question was Craig Erwich, who was promoted to head of 20th Television just days after personally killing the “New Sunnydale” pilot.

Deadline’s sources say the cancellation caught everyone off guard, and the show was undergoing “well-received” rewrites with extensive communication between the producers and the creative team. And it was Craig Erwich himself, the Hulu Originals exec who allegedly dislikes the “Buffy” franchise, who made the call. Gellar claimed that she and Zhao were “fighting an uphill battle since day one” due to his low opinion of the series.

It’s entirely possible the show could have been bad, but the key factor here is that it was unfinished. The creative team was completely blindsided, having been encouraged by other executives to keep refining the script. But it seems like one executive’s personal tastes can override all that, and that’s a pretty depressing glimpse into how Hollywood works.

It makes me wonder if someone at Disney had it out for “Willow,” too. (Told you I wasn’t over it.)

An extra word from Sarah Michelle Gellar

I’m a journalist specializing in entertainment and streaming services. Of course, I’m dying to know what “New Sunnydale” would have been like. Curiosity runs in my veins.

But I’m holding back that urge for now. After the news broke that Hulu wouldn’t be moving forward with the project, Sarah Michelle Gellar made a plea to fans. “If you see [the pilot] leaked, don’t watch it because you’re not getting our vision,” she said. The idea is that the script wasn’t final—it was still going through rewrites to appeal to OG viewers and add more of Gellar’s Buffy back into the narrative.

So she doesn’t want fans to judge the project based on any old, leaked scripts that were already being workshopped. Which makes sense. It’s like judging a painting when it still looks like a blobby mess. Trust the process, you know?

If you want a new project to hyperfixate on, Netflix just announced the cast for their own Scooby Gang. Like, the actual Scooby Gang, for a live-action “Scooby-Doo,” not the popular nickname for the Buffy teens. Will it make it to air? Or will it, like “New Sunnydale,” get axed before the pilot sees the light of day? Let’s find out!

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