May 31, 2009 12:00 PM
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San Francisco, 3:26 AM
Wed Feb 10
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If I'm as convinced as I am that Joss Whedon should stay away from the proposed Buffy movie, does that mean that I have some ideas for who should take it on? Perhaps. Here're some contenders, and why I'd want to see them stake their reputations on the line.
Guillermo del Toro
This, of course, falls under the "It'll never happen, but if only" heading; del Toro's schedule is famously busy over the next few years, and entirely devoid of revamping old television franchises, but if nothing else, surely his Hellboy movies have shown he knows how to mix comedy and horror in an appropriate, visually stunning, way. Still, with him off the table, why not turn to...
Alfonso Cuaron
Pluses: Y tu mamá también shows that he understands teen emotion (and how ridiculous it can be) better than most, and Children Of Men that he can direct the hell out've action sequences. Plus, his Harry Potter movie was easily the best of the series so far, coaxing better performances and making the magic stranger than the Chris Columbus weirdness we'd seen before. Minuses: Would he be interested in taking on another franchise?
JJ Abrams
Well, maybe not, but if he did it, you know it's be wildly successful. Who I really meant, though, was...
Drew Goddard
If we're looking for someone who has Vampire Slaying experience, why not the writer of Cloverfield? Goddard got his writing start on Buffy and Angel, before going on to work in the JJ Abramsverse with Alias, Lost and that New York monster movie. Right now, he's directing Cabin In The Woods, which he co-wrote with one Joss Whedon. Would he bring a joint Whedon/Abrams sensibility to the movie? And if he did, would that be awesome, or the worst of both worlds?
Sam Raimi
Drag Me To Hell showed that Raimi still has the horror (and, for that matter, comedy) chops, and the Spider-Man movies have proven that he can do teen multi-movie franchises without breaking a sweat. Buffy might be a little too familiar to him to be interesting, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't love to see what he could do with it nonetheless.
Catherine Hardwicke
Okay, not really; I thought the action sequences in Twilight were messy and unconvincing. But I have to admit liking the idea of letting her vent being thrown off the Twilight movies by killing lots of fictional vamps.
Harry Selick
I have no idea why, but I am convinced that if Selick remade Buffy as something oddly closer to the tone of his Coraline adaptation, aimed at a younger audience than the television series (but not necessarily featuring stop motion animation), it'd be something truly amazing, and unlike the much beloved Whedon version enough to allow it to be accepted by fans of that incarnation, as well. Maybe my curious love of Monkeybone has infected my mind.
I purposefully tried to stay in the "Directors likely to try and make an attempted blockbuster version of Buffy" realm - that is to say, recognizable names - but who am I missing? Is there anyone out there that you'd trust to recreate the franchise from almost-scratch? Use the comments to let me know who escaped my mind when I most needed them.
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
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