The Cold-blooded Truth About Hulu’s Buffy Reboot

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It’s been a whirlwind week for Disney executive Craig Erwich. He received a promotion on Monday, gaining responsibility for 20th Television and 20th Animation in addition to his roles at Hulu and ABC. However, Tuesday brought some drama. Deadline reported that Erwich was the Disney executive criticized by Sarah Michelle Gellar after Hulu decided not to move forward with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot. Gellar told People magazine that this executive openly disliked the original series, even boasting about never having watched it all – and that he didn’t think it was for him. It’s a pretty awkward situation!

It’s disappointing for fans that the planned Buffy reboot, which Chloé Zhao was going to direct, won’t happen on Hulu, but it’s common for TV networks to cancel promising reboots. HBO Max, for instance, canceled The Boondocks reboot in 2022, even after ordering two seasons, and Disney+ scrapped the Lizzie McGuire revival in 2020, despite filming two episodes. Hulu had only ordered a pilot for Buffy, which is standard practice – networks create pilots to decide whether to move forward with a full season. Even HBO, known for supporting creative projects, regularly declines pilots, even expensive ones based on popular franchises, as Naomi Watts and George R.R. Martin can attest. Pilots failing to get picked up is simply a normal part of the TV industry.

As a movie and TV lover, I was really surprised to hear Sarah Michelle Gellar publicly call out a Hulu executive! It’s rare for stars to do that, and it usually happens when they’re seriously upset about how a project was cancelled. It seems the timing of Hulu’s decision really fueled her reaction. They told her and Jessica Zhao—who was nominated for an Oscar for Hamnet—that New Sunnydale wasn’t going forward on a Friday, right before both of their big events. Gellar was heading to the premiere of Ready or Not 2, and Zhao was getting ready for the Academy Awards! There’s never a good time to deliver news like that, but this was especially bad timing. Apparently, Hulu felt the Buffy team had been waiting for a decision for a while and couldn’t delay it any longer. Still, waiting just one more day—until after Gellar’s premiere and the Oscars—would have looked a lot better. Though, to be fair, Gellar chose to share the news on Instagram on Saturday, which meant Zhao was inevitably going to be asked about it on a night that should have been solely focused on Hamnet.

As a lifelong fan of Buffy, I was really disappointed to hear Hulu passed on New Sunnydale. But honestly, looking at it from a business perspective, I get it. It’s not just about whether a show is good – though I think Zhao’s vision would have been amazing – it’s about whether it can attract a massive audience. The Ankler reported the pilot alone cost $12 million, and even future episodes wouldn’t have been cheap. That puts a lot of pressure on a show, especially a reboot of something as beloved as Buffy. Hulu isn’t FX; they need a guaranteed hit, not just something fans would briefly revisit for nostalgia. It sounds like the executives decided the risk was too high, and they didn’t see enough potential for a huge, sustained viewership. Kate Aurthur from Variety put it perfectly: they didn’t want to waste money on a project that likely wouldn’t live up to the incredibly high expectations of the fanbase. It might not have been the right decision, executives are often wrong, but from what I’ve read, it seems like a pretty clear-cut case of cutting losses.

What’s the future of the Buffy reboot? While cancelled shows sometimes find new life elsewhere, it seems unlikely here. Disney owns the rights to Buffy and would probably want to keep a potential hit in-house, even though allowing another platform like Netflix to take it on would still generate revenue. Letting it go would mean missing out on the full profit potential, something Disney clearly isn’t eager to do, considering they initially ordered the reboot. For now, Disney will likely wait and see if Sarah Michelle Gellar might be open to revisiting the project after her experience with Hulu. If she shows renewed interest, a Buffy revival could still happen.

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2026-03-19 19:58