Is there still life in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? SciFi Wire got their hands on a casting call for a new animated Buffy project – but before you get too excited be aware that it’s motion comic webisodes based on the current ‘Season 8’ comic book series.
The new comic is actually quite good – it’s written by a whole passle of Buffy types and overseen by Joss Whedon, so it brings the real feel of the series, but without being hampered by the budget of an off-network genre show – but how exciting is a motion comic? Especially when the scoop that SciFi has indicates that original cast members like Eliza Dushku will not be returning to do voices?
Their casting call shows that the storyline being adapted is No Future For You, where Faith goes undercover to stop an evil Slayer who is working for Season 8’s big bad, Twilight (I haven’t been really keeping up, but is that a direct jab at the book/movie phenomenon?). This storyline, in the comics, had Buffy going lesbian, by the way.
My big questions are as follows: will the original cast be back for the main roles, or have they already cast Buffy, Giles, Xander, Willow et al? And will these motion comics start telling original stories or will they just be adaptations of printed material? The motion comic thing is very in vogue at the moment with the iPod generation, or at least with the people trying to sell shit to the iPod generation.
I’d love to see an animated Buffy finally make it to life. And I wouldn’t want it to be the ‘Buffy The High School Years But Now Starring Dawn‘ as originally pitched – make it an animated version of the series that continues on with the story. That way it doesn’t matter how old your leads get, you can keep everything perfect in toon form.