Sarah Michelle Gellar Names Marvel Actor Eyed for Cancelled ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Reboot
Following the unexpected cancellation of the Chloé Zhao-directed Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot series last week, lead actress Sarah Michelle Gellar has another surprise in store for fans mourning the loss of Buffy: New Sunnydale, which is no longer moving forward at Hulu.
On the press tour for the acclaimed horror film Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, the star of the cult original series, which ran from 1997 to 2003, revealed more details about how the scrapped series may have unfolded. Speaking to Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2, Sarah unveiled a "scoop" about the show, which involved one of her closest co-stars.
"You want a scoop that no-one knows; that no-one's ever heard? You know who was supposed to be in the Buffy reboot but was not available and was going to be brought in later? But she's one of the few who has read it?" Gellar asked Mills. "She might be sitting next to me!"
Kathryn Newton Was Meant To Star in the Cancelled ‘Buffy’ Reboot — But There’s Still a Chance It Could Happen
The person next to her was actress Kathryn Newton, star of Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), HBO's Big Little Lies (2017–2019), as well as the CW's long-running cult series, Supernatural, which she appeared in from 2014 to 2018. Newton plays Faith MacCaullay, the sister of the previous film's protagonist, Grace Le Domas, played by Samara Weaving. Geller portrays Ursula Danforth, the lead antagonist of the new film.
"That is an exclusive, we've never said it!" Gellar said.
"[Kathryn] was supposed to be in the pilot, and the dates in the end didn't work," she explained. So it was gonna be later in the show. But there you go," she added.
According to reports, Hulu is considering reworking the scrapped pilot into another new project and has allegedly not given up on the Buffy franchise, unwilling to sell their rights to the IP involving the beloved series to another network. However, this may be an uphill climb for Gellar and Zhao, with the former openly criticizing Hulu, claiming a singular executive who rejected the series was completely unfamiliar with the original Buffy series.