On the first of August, Dave was in Chicago, news was being handled by other B&U’rs and the four-minute spec presentation to the long-forgotten Buffy The Vampire Slayer Animated series debuted on YouTube.
Bits and pieces exist of this timeline, but best give it you as we find it.
From Wikipedia:
Development began on the show in 2001. Whedon and Jeph Loeb [ED: This pre-dates Loeb’s similar duties on Heroes] were to be Executive Producers for the show, and most of the cast from Buffy would return to voice their characters [ED: Barring Sarah Michelle Gellar, who was in the middle of her “cast me as anything but Buffy again” phase]. However the series soon ran into problems. 20th Century Fox were going to produce the show, and it was initially planned that the show would air on Fox Kids, possibly as early as February 2002. When Fox Kids ceased operations Fox shopped it to other networks. When no network was willing to purchase the series, production halted.
Two years later, in 2004, Fox once again showed an interest in developing and selling the show to another network. Various key actors/actresses including Anthony Stewart Head, did voice work, and artwork was produced to make a four-minute presentation. That pilot was used to try to sell the series to a network. However once again no network was willing to take the risk of purchasing the show. Loeb has pointed out that networks find the show difficult since it would be too adult to air with children’s television, but not suitable to many people in a prime-time slot.
This lead to Whedon making this flabbergasted statement to The Hollywood Reporter (yes, we got to use “flabbergasted,” bonus):
“We just couldn’t find a home for (it). We had a great animation director, great visuals, six or seven hilarious scripts from our own staff — and nobody wanted it. I was completely baffled. I felt like I was sitting there with bags of money and nobody would take them from me. It was a question of people either not wanting it or not being able to put up the money because it was not a cheap show. One thing I was very hard-line about was, I didn’t want people to see it if it looked like crap. I wanted it to be on a level with “Animaniacs” or “Batman: The Animated Series.” And that’s a little pricier. But I just don’t think it’s worth doing unless it’s beautiful to look at as well as fun.
Then, the clip leaked on August 1st 2008, leading to a Facebook group and petition to get Buffy: The Animated Series on the air and find it a home for all to see.
On August 20th, Nicholas Brendon (who played Xander on the TV series), said in his audioblog: ” I know that there’s been talk about the Buffy Animated Series. Which we did, gosh, like, three years ago. You know, to be quite honest with you, I don’t know why it didn’t go further, but I know that there’s been a lot of hububaloo on the old YouTube there, and I checked it out and I almost got a little teary. You know, I hadn’t seen Xander in a while, and it was kind of neat to kind of go back into that library and that into life, and all that stuff. But, yeah. So, listen, I’ll go on the record by saying I would love to do an animated series for Buffy. That being said, I might be the only one. But, I’m not sure. I haven’t had a chance to talk to anybody about it. So, you know, keep your fingers crossed.”
The explosive nature of the YouTube pilot even motivated MTV to track down Jeph Loeb this week, though he must be busy preparing the Heroes onslaught next month, and ask him about the state of Buffy.
Loeb said: “Everything still exists — the designs, the scripts. It’s such a ‘no-duh’ project, so why the hell not? All you need is to draw it. Eight years ago, there was no fascination with ‘Family Guy’ or ‘Robot Chicken,’ but there’s an audience now that could drive to it. You can’t stand in the way of pop culture.”
The series takes place during the events of Season One of the television show, so Buffy is still in high school, the Scooby gang is still working out of the library, but Dawn Summers – a character suddenly added to the show in the 5th season – also appeared in the character art. The show has been dubbed “Episode 7.5” by some of the creative team, and finished 8 story arcs, most fully-scripted, before the project was shut down.
So, is Buffy coming back in animated form?
Who knows? But when was the last time we had some good YouTube-inspired controversy?
