Ah, the good old days, back when Joss Whedon wasn’t calling my editorials hate bombs. Back then I interviewed him for Serenity, and one of the questions I asked was about the future of the Buffyverse. I reasoned that most fans had come to Firefly, the show that Serenity was based on, through the DVD box set. To them that was a direct to DVD show. Why not continue Buffy stories that way – which would allow you to go beyond what TV censors would allow without having to worry about pleasing the big audience of a theatrical movie.
Whedon was impressed – I was the first person who had said that to him. He confirmed that talks were in progress to do just that, and that he didn’t want to spill the beans yet, so I agreed to not run that part of the interview. I guess the beans are spilled, though – Marti Noxon told SciFi Wire "There are serious discussions going on about bringing some of the characters back and making a few movies that will go straight to DVD, but they will certainly be the quality they have always been.”
She says that it would probably be secondary characters, and when I spoke to Whedon it was in the context of a Spike film. That’s what I would expect to be the first of what will most likely be a very lucrative series of films.