Love Those Kuzuis

You’ve probably heard already (from our Need to Know section) that Fran and Kaz Kuzui may be planning a movie re-boot of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise. Fran Kuzui, a former script supervisor whose only previous movie as a director was the interestingly quirky Tokyo Pop, directed the original movie and got her husband, a successful Japanese producer, to put up the money for the film; they continue to own the rights to the character and the franchise, and their names have been on every incarnation and spinoff of Buffy since then. They are not well-liked by Whedonites; some Wikipedia vandal wrote this on Kaz’s entry:

Kuzui intends to relaunch the Buffy franchise without Joss Whedon, the man who created the original concept. This fact confirms the rumours that have been circulating for years that he has no soul.

I like them, for the following reasons:

a) The original Buffy movie is criminally underrated and considerably more true to “Joss’s original vision” than almost any episode from the final three seasons of the series (including several episodes “Joss” wrote himself).

b) Tokyo Pop is one of the ’80s-est movies of the ’80s.

c) Kaz also produced Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Orgazmo, and is therefore partially (albeit indirectly) responsible for getting Comedy Central to pick up South Park.

Actually, though it might never happen, I’d be fine with a Buffy reboot movie, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say I would be fine with it with or without Joss Whedon. The original TV cast is probably not going to re-assemble, and the characters were pretty well exhausted after seven years anyway, so why not start over with a new Buffy and a new set of supporting characters? That approach worked out OK in 1997.