Dolly Parton says a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” reboot could still be in the cards after a planned remake was put on hold in 2022. Parton, through her company Sandollar Productions, was an uncredited producer on both the original 1992 “Buffy” film written by Joss Whedon and starring Kristy Swanson, and the beloved TV series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar that ran from 1997 to 2003. In 2018 it was announced a reboot was in the works, but the plan was put on hold in 2022.
“They’re still working on that,” Parton, 78, told Business Insider during an interview about her latest collaboration with Duncan Hines and parent company Conagra Brands. “They’re thinking about bringing it back and revamping it.” Parton told the outlet she was “very involved” in the TV series, though she lived in Nashville, Tenn., while it was shot in Los Angeles.
“A lot of my work was done just conversing back and forth with the business people there,” Parton said. “I have to give more people more credit on ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ than me. A lot of people did so much sweat on that,” she adds. “That little show did great.”
In 2018, Deadline reported a reboot was in the works from Whedon and producer and screenwriter Monica Owusu-Breen, and it was expected to have a Black lead. After backlash from fans who believed that meant a Black actress would portray Buffy, Owusu-Breen took to Twitter to set the record straight.
“There is only one Buffy. One Xander, one Willow, Giles, Cordelia,, Oz, Tara, Kendra, Faith, Spike, Angel… They can’t be replaced. Joss Whedon’s brilliant and beautiful series can’t be replicated,” she wrote. But here we are, twenty years later… And the world seems a lot scarier,” she wrote. “So maybe, it could be time to meet a new Slayer.”
Gellar, 46, has never been interested in returning to the role, and believed the series ended with the possibility of future Slayers wide open. “I am very proud of the show that we created and it doesn’t need to be done. We wrapped that up,” Gellar told SFX Magazine in 2022, referring to her refusal to participate in any reboots.
“I am all for them continuing the story, because there’s the story of female empowerment. I love the way the show was left: ‘Every girl who has the power can have the power.’ It’s set up perfectly for someone else to have the power,” Gellar explained. “The metaphors of Buffy were the horrors of adolescence,” she said. “I think I look young, but I am not an adolescent.”