Before we start, let's establish some context. Promoting her new CBS sitcom The Crazy Ones, starring Robin Williams and James Wolk (Mad Men's Bob Benson), Sarah Michelle Gellar was asked the question she's probably asked with more regularity than "Would you like soy milk with that?", "Would you ever play Buffy again?". (Remember that season two Angel episode, Eternity, about the ageing soap star haunted by the role of her youth after her show was syndicated? That always seemed prescient, didn't it?)
Gellar's response was as follows, "Joss and I always talk about [a movie]. But the thing with Buffy is that Buffy was a movie, and it ultimately didn't work as a movie. And I mean, we had such miles to overcome when we were trying to do a TV show based on a movie. And one of the reasons is that the story works better over time. If there was ever the right story, we would do it."
It's a polite, considered response, and one that certainly doesn't rule out the possibility in future. With the non-Whedon, non-Gellar Buffy reboot thankfully sleeping the long sleep at present, would a movie be the best way to revisit the Sunnydale lot? Buffy's story moved from the screen to the page in 2007, with the canonical season eight and nine comic book series, so there'd be some catching up to do for non-comic reading fans were a chronological movie to ever arrive.
Even with all participants willing, Joss Whedon's current schedule is likely to preclude any such thing for a good number of years, fitting with Gellar's final words on the subject, "At that point, the stake would be my walker and I would be hobbling in". A geriatric slayer? You know what, there might be something in that...
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No.
"Buffy" is one of my all-time top 10, but attempting to revive it as a movie--especially with members of the original cast--would be a serious mistake.
I can see a revival in ~10 years, as "Buffy, The Next Generation", maybe. But right now the idea is about as attractive as Mark-Paul Gosselaar in "Saved by the Bell--The Movie" (in 3D and IMAX).
Buffy three-part made for TV movie? yes. Buffy 2 hour big-budget bonanza? no.