Buffy movie will slay our lust for vampires

By Tim Robey 4:03PM GMT 24 Nov 2010

What is Buffy without the involvement of creative mastermind Joss Whedon, asks Tim Robey.

There’s just no stopping the Hollywood remake factory – notional spanners such as “but the new ones are lousy!” and “aren’t we bored of these?” somehow never manage to mangle up the ongoing conveyor belt.

But at least some articulate words of tongue-in-cheek protest are currently been flung in its direction. Presenting a feature spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer without the involvement of creative mastermind Joss Whedon, not to mention any of the cast, is like trying to bake a pizza without the dough. Whedon’s entertaining response to the news is a reminder in itself of the savvy, quippy, culturally-aware qualities he brought to Buffy in the first place.

Though he’s virtually disowned it, Whedon has the screenplay credit even on the idea’s foetal and least successful incarnation, as a 1992 film starring Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland and Luke Perry. The fact that he was able to shepherd this semi-abortive big-screen debut into eight seasons of cult nirvana is all the possessor’s credit on a franchise anyone needs.

At the same time, Whedon knows full well that he’s the last person in a position to bemoan the dry well of original ideas in Hollywood. He’s currently working on Marvel superhero team-up-flick The Avengers, which he sardonically refers to in his open letter as “my Avengers idea that I made up myself”, while his quips about starting his own rival Batman series are unlikely to have Warner Bros’ lawyers racing to slap him with an injunction, unless they have even less sense of humour than you’d expect.

Still, though he admits to having “no legal grounds for doing anything other than sighing audibly”, it’s hard to believe Whedon isn’t genuinely peeved beneath all the winking. As a writer, he’d always brought a little extra to his projects – even when that extra overeggs the pudding, as it did a bit in Alien: Resurrection.

What is Buffy likely to be without him? I greatly fear some kind of emo revamp. And disingenuous though he’s being asking “but seriously, are vampires even popular any more?”, I think there’s room for an irony-free question as well. Do we really need yet more?

Telegraph