By Kate Aurthur
Plus IconKate Aurthur
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©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection The show is called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale,” but Buffy Anne Summers is barely in it. Rather than revolving around Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Buffy, the shooting draft for the show’s pilot episode — written by sisters Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, and obtained by Variety — introduces an entirely new set of characters, and, crucially, a new Slayer, a 16-year-old high-schooler named Nova (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). In the Zuckermans’ original draft of the pilot, Buffy appears only at the end, in a tag.
A close reading of the script, directed by Chloé Zhao, may give clues to why Hulu passed on the show, which has caused an ongoing uproar online from the “Buffy” faithful eager to see their favorite character return to television. Zhao, the Oscar-winning director of “Nomadland,” took on 2021’s “Eternals” to mixed reviews, before returning to the art-house space with last year’s “Hamnet.” Sources tell Variety that her take on “Buffy” might have not been mainstream enough for Hulu, although that’s been disputed by Gellar, who blamed an executive at the streamer for his lack of familiarity with the original material.
But back to the pilot. Over the course of the script for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale,” Nova, described as a “brainy introvert,” discovers that she’s the Slayer — and people in Sunnydale do know the mythology of what Slayers are because of what happened to the town back in Buffy’s day. Set during a “Vampire Weekend,” a Renaissance Faire-like celebration of the town’s dubious history, Nova takes down two actual vampires after coming into her powers. By the episode’s end, the formerly friendless Nova has a new Scooby Gang flanking her, to use “Buffy”‘s terminology. The script drops hints about what’s to come: Her dad, a photojournalist, is overly protective, and has moved them around a lot after Nova was kidnapped as a young child. And all the vampires that Buffy buried in the show’s 2003 series finale, when the Hellmouth collapsed in on itself, taking Sunnydale down with it, have been awakened. Nova would have her work cut out for her.
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