Here’s a great idea: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.

Here’s a terrible idea: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer without Joss Whedon’s involvement.

And yet – it could happen!

This is purely ludicrous. There is a beloved franchise that fans are obsessed with, that has a creator that fans are obsessed with, and they want to hit the reset button the whole thing? Why? It made sense to reboot Batman and James Bond and Star Trek, because the franchises grew old, stale, and tired. But Buffy only ended a few years back, and the comics continuation is even newer!

Now, if they were going to launch a new property about another vampire slayer, that would be less blasphemous. That way you could do away without the canon of Giles and Angel and Xander and Willow, and open up a new franchise that is related to but separate from the original. But if you’re calling it “Buffy” it had damn well better be the Buffy that we know and love.

And why not? A real, Whedon-sanctioned Buffy movie continuing from where Buffy/Angel/the comics left off could definitely do well at the box office. OK sure, maybe it wouldn’t put up Star Trek or The Dark Knight kind of numbers, and there’s the whole Firefly/Serenity thing, but movies based on TV shows with a cult following are nothing new. Sex and the City did well for an HBO show, but it’s movie did far better than its ratings might have predicted. And they’re maybe possibly eventually going to make an Arrested Development movie, so why not Buffy?

I just fail to see the point at trampling over characters and stories that people love and is still fresh in their minds. In twenty years if there has been no new Buffy material, and some hotshot filmmaker wants to breathe new life into it, why not. But now? I declare shenanigans.