BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER legacy sequel series in development

A new Buffy the Vampire Slayer project is in development at Hulu. This is not really surprising, with multiple attempts to resurrect the franchise having been discussed since not long after it concluded the first time around in 2003. However, this attempt appears to be closer to a pilot deal than any of the others, and is the first to have Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, attached in an official capacity.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer started as a movie script written by Joss Whedon. The resulting film, released in 1992 and starring Kristy Swanson and Donald Sutherland, did poorly at the box office but found a dedicated cult fanbase on home video. This led to a TV show being picked up by Fox in 1996, for airing on The WB starting the following year, with Whedon as showrunner and Gellar in the starring role. Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran for seven seasons (ending in 2003) and 144 episodes, winning both critical and commercial acclaim for its canny mixture of supernatural fantasy, horror, drama and light comedy. Its spin-off show, Angel, ran for five seasons and 110 episodes from 1999 to 2004.

Although the story continued in comics, attempts to resurrect the franchise in other formats failed. Spin-offs focusing around the characters of Spike (James Marsters), Giles (Tony Head) and Faith (Eliza Dushku) were in development at one time or another, but none made it off the ground.

In 2010 an attempt to reboot the franchise as a new movie series foundered, whilst a 2018 attempt at a total reboot with Whedon producing and Monica Owusu-Breen showrunning also failed to gain traction. Whedon's subsequent fall from grace for alleged toxic behaviour on the sets of his various projects seemed to stall any further development on projects closely associated with his name.

Sarah Michelle Gellar distanced herself from the show after its conclusion, not attending conventions and gently discouraging speculation over a reboot or sequel with herself involved. She starred in two Scooby Doo movies with husband Freddie Prinze Jr., as well as Cruel Intentions and The Grudge, and occasional TV work, most recently Paramount+'s Wolf Pack. She has mainly focused on business interests outside of television and film. However, she recently spoke of Buffy more warmly having sat down to watch the show with her own children for the first time, and found the experience rewarding.

The new iteration of the show being discussed is a successor series which will focus on a new regular cast, with Gellar's Buffy and possibly other actors from the original series appearing in recurring roles. Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao (Eternals, Nomadland) is being touted as a producer, writer and possibly director for some episodes. Nora Zuckerman and Lila Zuckerman (Poker Face, Prodigal Sons, Agents of SHIELD, Fringe) will produce and showrun. Rights-holders Fran Kuzui and Kaz Kuzui (who produced the 1992 film) will produce alongside Dolly Parton, whose production company worked on the original series. Whedon is not involved at this time.

The original Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended with Buffy finding a way of creating more Slayers, allowing others to take over the burden of saving the world and allowing her to have a vacation. Some of the spin-off media posited that Buffy would effectively become a mentor to a whole new generation of Slayers, and working more in the capacity of a general directing her forces against larger threats. Whether this project would go in a similar direction, or return to the status quo of a single Slayer, remains to be seen.

Netflix's THE SANDMAN to end with Season 2

Netflix has confirmed what has been strongly rumoured for a good two years now, that the upcoming second season of The Sandman will the final one.

Despite early reports that Netflix were eyeing three to four seasons for the show, the first season's just-good-enough performance (which saw an unusually long delay before the second season was commissioned) and the impending problem that main character Dream plays a smaller role in many of the storylines in the middle and latter part of the graphic novel series, barely appearing in some issues, saw Netflix move to make the second season the final one. The series will continue to adapt the primary story arc of the comics, but in an abridged format, with some of the middle-series storylines and episodes likely to fall by the wayside.

Extremely fortuitously for Netflix, they made this decision before filming and a long time before accusations of sexual misconduct were made against Sandman creator/author Neil Gaiman by eight women. These accusations, which Gaiman has strenuously denied, has seen both publishers and another production company, Amazon Studios, cutting ties with the author.

Netflix has not yet confirmed a broadcast date for Season 2 of The Sandman beyond "2025."

Rebecca Yarros sells 12 million copies of her EMPYREAN series in under two years

Rebecca Yarros' Empyrean fantasy series has sold (non-paywalled reference) a startling 12 million copies in less than two years, marking it as one of the fastest-selling fantasy series of the 21st Century. The first book in the series, Fourth Wing, was published in May 2023 and was followed by Iron Flame in November 2023 and Onyx Storm in January 2025. Two more books are projected to bring the series to a conclusion.

Onyx Storm itself is the fastest-selling adult novel published in the last twenty years, shifting 2.7 million copies in its first week on sale. Onyx Storm saw bookshop midnight openings, launch parties and other events that haven't been seen since the release of the final Harry Potter novel in 2007, without the dual adult/child appeal of that book.

For comparison, Yarros' sales in two years are approaching half those of Brandon Sanderson's non-Wheel of Time books in twenty (Sanderson has sold 40 million books, with over 12 million of those being his three Wheel of Time novels, for approximately 28 million sales of his solo work). Yarros has sold approximately a quarter of the total sales of her colleague Sarah J. Maas, who has sold just over 40 million books in thirteen years. 12 million is also approximately the same number of books that George R.R. Martin sold of his Song of Ice and Fire series before the TV adaptation began.

The only author who can be said to had a more impressive debut was Patrick Rothfuss, who shifted over 10 million copies of his debut novel The Name of the Wind alone (though nowhere near as fast).

With two more books to come and an adaptation of the books underway at Amazon MGM Studios, it's clear that these figures are only going to continue rising in the future.

What will be interesting to see is if this influx of new readers benefits the rest of the fantasy genre, but it does confirm that Romantasy's current sales dominance is no danger of ending soon.