Buffy's Sarah Michelle Gellar begs fans not to read leaked reboot script

'If you see it leaked, don't watch it because you're not getting our vision'

It’s been a wild week to be a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On March 14 that Buffy Summers herself (Sarah Michelle Gellar) took to Instagram to deliver news that felt like a stake to the heart. A planned Hulu follow-up show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale had been canceled. In a subsequent interview as part of her press tour for Read or Not 2: Here I Come, Gellar revealed that the series was killed a Buffy-hating Hulu executive.

Buffy fans who were hopeful to see the Slayer on their screens again were devastated. So much so that, to Gellar’s dismay, some fans have already started looking for the canceled pilot’s script online. Variety even published a scoopy behind-the-scenes feature that heavily references the leaked script.

Gellar explained to SiriusXM's Page Six Radio why she hopes the pilot script will never end up online.

"I actually hope it doesn't because then everyone's going to have an opinion on this and that, and pilots are not finished," Gellar explained. "It wasn't done, right? It's not like we did a season, finished it, and then they shelved it. It's not like when they made the Batgirl movie and didn't [release] it. That movie was finished."

Gellar went on to further clarify that what New Sunnydale producer-director Chloe Zhao and writers Nora and Lilla Zuckerman had produced was solely for a pilot and not a full season. Murmurs about the pilot’s flaws surfaced at Variety, which reported a surprising lack of Gellar and said the reboot felt "too young" for audiences.

Gellar apparently only appears at the end of the pilot, where she, now going by Anne Summers, is sitting in the New York office of a multinational corporation. However, Buffy’s life wouldn’t have remained peaceful for long, as the reboot was set up to facilitate her return to Sunnydale. According to Variety, Zuckerman’s rewrites involved adding more Buffy to the story and maturing the tone to attract a more adult audience. Still, even that wasn’t enough to satisfy Hulu.

While the finalized pilot has yet to leak online, a 2024 draft is circulating. Gellar reiterated that the script circulating isn’t the final version and pleaded with fans not to read it.

“If you see it leaked, don't watch it because you're not getting our vision,” Gellar said.

It’s difficult to determine whether we’ll ever see Gellar and Zhao’s true vision, but while a Buffy reboot may seem like an obvious win for any network, Variety notes that Disney (which owns the IP through 20th Century Studios) apparently isn't interested in shopping the show elsewhere. It’s possible it might land on Disney Plus, and other sources mention that “the door is open for more Buffy.” However, whether Zhao (or even Gellar) will be part of those future plans remains to be seen.