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A Buffy Series Without Joss Whedon?
For more than a decade, Writer/Producer/Director Joss Whedon has been synonymous with the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" franchise, so much so that it seems inconceivable that anyone would even attempt to launch a new film or television series about the legendary super heroine without him. But strangely enough, that was, or maybe still is, a plan in the works.
"It's a major misnomer to call Joss the 'creator' of the Buffy Summers character," says a studio executive (currently with Sony) who asked not to be identified. "As wonderful as Joss' writing is, he didn't come up with that character. He got the gig to do the first movie as a write-for-hire job. He wasn't thrilled with what they did to his script and smartly managed to gain control of the TV series but really, 'Buffy' isn't his baby."
The original "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie came out in 1992 and starred Kristy Swanson as 'The Chosen One' sent to save the world from demons. The 20th Century Fox film, scripted by hired gun Joss Whedon, was directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, who also produced the motion picture with Kaz Kuzui. Whedon, after complaining loudly about the production team responsible for "ruining his script," managed to land a deal with Fox to produce the TV version in 1997, garnering creative control over the Buffy character. The Kuzui's were attached as Executive Producers on the show (which aired for five seasons on the WB network before moving to UPN) but wielded no real power on the series, which is largely where things got sticky. The Kuzui's had initially wanted to continue on with the franchise under their own banner but the studio trusted Whedon's vision for the character more than theirs.
"Joss did a tremendous job expanding on the Buffy character and its mythology," says the Sony executive. "Aside from Buffy's parents, who were unnamed in the movie, the only character from the movie to cross over to the series was the Slayer herself. Characters like Spike, Giles, Xander, the Master, Glory...that was all Joss."
However, somewhere along the way, egos were bruised, finances were disputed, and a rift occurred between Whedon and the franchise's original "parents" with the Kuzui's attempting to continue on with their own version of the super heroine...all without Whedon.
"I don't think I'm revealing any big trade secrets in Hollywood by mentioning that a script had been circulating for years for a proposed big-screen Buffy sequel that would've been produced by the Kuzui's with absolutely no involvement whatsoever from Joss," says the Sony exec. "The script was rather convoluted, I thought, and focused more on a male slayer character than Buffy, which made little sense to me...but it doesn't change the legalities. The Kuzui's made a case that their contract had been breached by Fox and Mutany Enemy (Whedon's production company) and that they were well within their rights to exercise their option to do their own interpretation of the character and I presume as a bargaining tool began shopping the idea around."
If that's not confusing enough, to further complicate matters, two years ago, a third party reportedly jumped into the fray, just after Whedon announced that he was ending Buffy's run on UPN in 2003. The plan, according to Hollywood sources, was to use the Kuzui's option to create a completely separate TV program with a new actress taking over from series star Sarah Michelle Gellar.
"I was contacted by a producer -- whose name I won't mention -- and asked to submit 'Joss Whedon-type material'," says "Communication Breakdown" director Richard O'Sullivan (whose credits can be seen on IMDb by clicking here). "This was during the period in which I was first starting to pitch 'Breach of Heaven' as a TV series and the obvious comparisons came up since they're both kind of in the same genre. They wanted something 'Whedonesque' but didn't really give me any details about what the project was."
Part of O'Sullivan's writing sample (which can be read by clicking here) was subsequently leaked by a disgruntled former associate to Harry Knowles' Ain't It Cool News website, which initially reported it as the 2003/2004 season opener of Buffy's sister show, "Angel," thus sparking a debate among Whedon fans about the script's validity.
"At first I freaked," says O'Sullivan. "I thought, '****, the whole thing just went up in smoke.' But then, my phone rang."
O'Sullivan says the producers of the proposed show concocted a plan to use the controversy to their advantage. The idea was to continue with plans to secure the option rights to the Buffy character from the Kuzui's (who felt they still had the right to use the main character from the movie, though certainly not the newer characters or character histories from Whedon's series), but now, in order to pitch the concept to Fox (or wherever the project landed after the legalities were sorted out) they wanted to rush a pilot into "top secret" production and book Screen Gems studios in Wilmington, N.C. (host to such series as "Dawson's Creek" and "One Tree Hill") to serve as the home for the new show.
"I was offered a producer's credit in exchange for basically acting as the 'front man' for the pilot," says O'Sullivan. "They wanted to do business as 'Breach of Heaven,' cast as 'Breach of Heaven,' basically tell everyone we were making the 'Breach of Heaven' pilot...but then when the cast and crew showed up, shoot the pilot for the new Buffy."
O'Sullivan was asked to script the pilot, with specific instructions given that the story would not be set in Sunnydale nor would it include characters from Whedon's shows, other than Buffy and the odd mention of the Slayer's mother, who was not to ever be referred to as "Joyce" (since "Joyce Summers" was a specific creation of Whedon).
The end result, which carried the working title "Slayer: The Adventures of Buffy Summers," picked up some 90 years in the future with the heroine frozen in time, literally turned to wood, and part of an art piece depicting a war between humans and demons.
"The idea was that at some point after the turn of the new millennium, a great battle took place between good and evil and for whatever reason, a powerful mystical force froze Buffy and the demons she was fighting for almost a century," says O'Sullivan. "When the story opens, a tour guide is explaining to a group of school kids -- a mixture of humans and demons -- that the world 90 years ago was a much different, less tolerant place."
Naturally, Buffy is released from the spell, and, after disposing of the demons she had been frozen with for nine decades, is forced to deal with the new inter-dimensional world order.
"It was a very Patton-after-the-war type script," says O'Sullivan. "Here you had Buffy, instantly transported to a new place in time, all her friends gone, the war she had fought since she was sixteen years old over...not knowing who to trust, not knowing how to deal with the fact that she's not supposed to be fighting the monsters she was brought forth to kill. Plus, now she has to wrap her head around concepts like vampires and demons having free will and coexisting with humans in everyday life. It was an interesting new dynamic and not just a rehash of roads already traveled."
Plans for the series, which was being geared toward syndication or cable, were put on hold last year after negotiations to secure the rights stalled amidst the predictable legal wrangling. O'Sullivan believes, however, that the show, which likely would have starred Polish-born actress Aleks West (whom O'Sullivan later cast in his film "Communication Breakdown") would still make for some interesting television.
"Don't get me wrong," says the filmmaker. "I'm a huge Joss Whedon fan. What he did with that series, and with 'Angel,' was groundbreaking stuff. It blew the original movie away and I actually found Fran Kuzui's film to be rather entertaining. But I think there are still so many different directions you can take that character."
Currently, plans remain in the works to bring O'Sullivan's "Breach of Heaven" -- presumably the real "Breach of Heaven" this time -- to television.
Aleks West as the third actress to play Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
Could it still happen?
Click here to see more pics of Aleks West
Breaking News: Fox Television has completely divested itself from Mutant Enemy, the production company owned by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" mastermind Joss Whedon. This has some insiders speculating that the rumors of a new Buffy series without Whedon at the helm may be true after all. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was originally a property sold to Fox by Kuzui Enterprises and Sandollar Television. Whedon, who penned the big screen film that the series was based on, pitched the idea of doing "Buffy" as a series to the WB in the late 90's and has largely been looked at as the driving force behind the series.
Over the years, there have been rumblings of a massive rift between Kuzui, Fox, and Whedon, with terms like "breach of contract" used liberally. A script for a big screen Buffy sequel (attached to the Kuzui camp) has circulated for awhile now and recently a brief screener for a proposed "Buffy" television pilot began making the rounds. According to Fox TV, it retains full rights to the Buffy franchise.
Fox refuses to comment on whether or not Kuzui and/or Sandollar retain a "first right of refusal" option as to who produces the show. Speculation is that the recent Fox TV/Whedon split indicates that Mutant Enemy does not.
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