Country singer icon Dolly Parton has shared that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot isn’t quite dead yet.
Did you know Dolly Parton was an uncredited producer on the original Buffy film and TV series? I sure as heck didn’t, which was why I was so surprised to see her recent interview with Business Insider where she confirmed there are still plans to reboot the classic 90s show. This was something that Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Geller, only confirmed last year, that Parton was actually a producer on the show, so I don’t feel too bad to have only just learned this now, and neither should you. In anycase, when asked by Business Insider about the long-attempted Buffy reboot, Parton shared that “they’re still working on that,” though didn’t go into any details about who’s working on it.
“They’re thinking about bringing it back and revamping it.” Currently, the rights to the series belong to Disney, so at the very least it will be responsible for the potential project. To add a bit of context, Parton’s production company Sandollar Productions co-produced the original Buffy movie, alongside Kuzui Enterprises, and later went on to produce the Joss-Whedon-led show. She went on to note that a lot of her work “was done just conversing back and forth with the business people,” 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.”
Director of the film, Fran Rubel Kuzui, tried to develop her own Buffy reboot movie back in 2009, but both cast members and fans alike didn’t like the idea of a reboot that Whedon wasn’t involved in. Whedon had also apparently proposed a Buffy reboot with a black lead alongside Monica Owusu-Breen, though this never materialised.
Important to note is that Whedon has several accusations of bullying and more from actors he’s worked with, like Ray Fisher, who worked with the writer/ director on Justice League, and Charisma Carpenter, who starred in both Buffy and its spin-off Angel. So his inclusion in a Buffy reboot these days would likely be less welcome overall.