Who Slayed the ‘Buffy’ Reboot — and Why

‘Failure to Launch’

Sources say Hulu spent $12 million on the Buffy pilot, which in keeping with the original, included action sequences, makeup and plenty of CGI. The 1992 Buffy movie starring Kristy Swanson that inspired the series cost $7 million to make (about $17 million adjusted for inflation, still a pretty modest budget). The original Gellar-led series, which launched in 1997 as a midseason replacement on the former WB Network and aired its first five seasons there before moving to UPN for its last two, started with a budget in the $1 million-per-episode vicinity, low considering the show’s visual effects needs for its supernatural creatures.

Watching the show now, it’s clear producers didn’t have the resources to spend big on effects even though by Buffy’s end, the episode budget had more than doubled. While the technology required for programs with VFX like HBO’s The Last of Us has improved in the past 20-plus years since Buffy concluded in 2003, streamers across the industry are increasingly budget-conscious after the Peak TV bubble burst. A $12 million spend on a pilot today is considered high — it’s more than double the cost of what NBCUniversal pays to produce an episode of Law & Order: SVU.

But at that sum, “The bar is so high given how much people love the original, and it didn’t clear that bar,” says a source who screened the completed pilot. “It wasn’t particularly good.” Adds another source who also saw the cut: “[Hulu] would have gotten raked over the coals; it was no good, and anyone who would see the show would not like it.”

Opinions vary about what the specific issues were. Some sources singled-out Zhao, a self-professed Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan whose passion for a revival drew Gellar back. “Part was Chloé, part was casting, part was the scripts never got there,” says the first source who screened the pilot.

Others point to Oscar winner and multiple nominee Zhao’s track record with broader mass fare like Marvel’s 2021 entry Eternals, which has a 47 percent score among critics on Rotten Tomatoes alongside its 77 percent rating from viewers. “Chloé Zhao’s commercial instincts are nil. Is there something commercial somewhere that makes you think she’s right for this material?” an agency source says. “She won an Oscar and people are stupid,” this person added, by way of explaining why the assignment went to Zhao. (For the record, Zhao’s Hamnet has made more than $100 million at the box office, and The Eternals grossed $402 million worldwide.)

Reps for Zhao declined comment and pointed to what the helmer said at the Oscars: that she was “not surprised” to have gotten the pass on Buffy.

A source close to Gellar, meanwhile, says the actress had stressed during production that everyone involved with New Sunnydale was “working on it until it was perfect” but that it never felt like the extra momentum ever happened. “It just didn’t seem to be coming together ever in the way they were hoping to have it come together,” this source says. “Failure to launch is best term for it.” It’s unclear if Gellar herself ever screened the completed pilot.

Still, Hulu’s decision to produce a Buffy pilot is the farthest along a new incarnation of the cult favorite has gotten. In 2018, 20th TV — when the studio was still owned by Fox — closed a deal with Whedon and writer Monica Owusu-Breen (who worked with the former on ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) to write a new, inclusive take on Buffy with a Black actress stepping in as the new slayer. The project never moved beyond the script stage.

Hulu’s Swing & the New Pilot Math

New Sunnydale was ordered to pilot in February 2025. Armstrong was tapped as the new slayer in mid-May as casting continued through the summer before production started in the fall. The finished pilot, sources say, was turned in at least four to five months ago, and insiders struggled with the decision to pick up the expensive pilot or pass.

“The fact that they almost picked it up despite it being bad speaks volumes to why they took four months to decide,” says a source with ties to Hulu.

Ultimately, Erwich made the call Friday night just as Gellar was about to take the stage at SXSW for the premiere of Ready or Not 2 — which, like Buffy, is produced by Disney (it’s from Searchlight) — and just two days before Zhao was poised to walk the red carpet at the Oscars (airing on Disney’s ABC) as the nominated director of Hamnet. The timing and optics, as multiple sources noted, could not have been worse.

“It was a cardinal sin how long it took — and it wasn’t meant to be announced the way it was,” an insider tells me. Just days before Erwich stunned the team with the news that Buffy was not moving, decisions were being made at Hulu about its next round of pilots, and the Disney-owned streamer ordered a pair — comedy Lex and a drama, Durango — after announcing development on a few other scripts. The natives, sources said, were getting restless about New Sunnydale and had been checking in regularly as they’d been told to expect a decision by week’s end. That’s when Erwich shared news of the pass, prompting Gellar to respond in a Saturday video on Instagram.

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To be fair, Hulu’s $12 million spend on a new Buffy was an example of the streamer attempting to be fiscally responsible. If Hulu had gone straight to series on Buffy and then passed on the pilot, there likely would have been sizable financial penalties to be paid to Gellar, Zhao and the Zuckermans, among others. As I reported in January when NBC made a spate of pilot orders, there are scores of benefits that come from producing a “test” episode of a comedy or drama: The process does reveal whether a premise, its creative team and cast can truly work while providing more opportunity to course-correct than the costlier straight-to-series route.

While Hulu will still go straight to series on high-profile projects (like Dan Fogelman’s NFL drama), the streamer reverted to the pilot process for most of its originals nearly two years ago and currently has the far less expensive YA drama Foster Dade from Greg Berlanti and Bash Doran and Ryan Coogler’s X-Files reboot with Danielle Deadwyler in the works. Hulu also went to pilot on its reboot of Prison Break before handing out a series order on the update from Elgin James nearly a year later. FX, the John Landgraf-led brand that streams originals on Hulu, also filmed a pilot before going to series on drama Disinherited despite it hailing from Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad veteran Peter Gould. And HBO Max is making pilots for two projects that are in the same 15-episode annual release model as The Pitt: cop drama American Blue from Jeremy Carver (Supernatural) and starring Milo Ventimiglia; and family drama How to Survive Without Me from Berlanti, Doran and Robbie Rogers with Ray Romano, Kaley Cuoco and Joshua Jackson attached. Additional pilot orders are expected to come from the platform.

As for Buffy, it remains to be seen if 20th TV, which controls the IP, will try again or even clear a path for New Sunnydale to be shopped to other platforms. As Gellar said in her Instagram video Saturday: “If the apocalypse comes… you can still beep me.”