In a move that wouldn’t be all that surprising once the Walt Disney Company buyout of Fox was complete, Fox is taking back its license of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ from Dark Horse Comics. You would expect this to happen after all the papers have been signed, so see this now does seem a bit premature and somewhat unexpected.
According to Joss Whedon:
“We want to do something more with Dark Horse right now — especially because fox is taking the Buffy license and the Firefly license back and Dark Horse has shepherded these licenses for decades now.”
It isn’t clear why the licenses are being revoked now though the new ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ soft reboot in the works could be tied to it. The idea that it would be heading to Marvel before the buyout being official seems a bit out of the question as the studio has been told to continue doing business as usual as it could still end up being scrubbed until the ink is dry.
The final issue is ‘Buffy Season 12’ is due out on September 19th, 2018, and will be the last installment of the comics. For those who are wondering, the studio did inform the creative team in time to give them a few issues to wrap up story arcs, though with 12 seasons of this particular run behind them that doesn’t feel like much:
“Similar to the show, we’re not going to close it all off in the sense of ‘Everybody’s dead!”‘ though we did think about doing that. But when I sat down with Chris Gage, it was with the intent that after everything we’ve been through we wanted to have something to say that mirrors and rounds off where we started this comic [run]. And then they said, ‘You have four issues,’ and it was like ‘Ohhh. That’s all the time we have.'”
So, four issues to wrap up everything from the television show and comics. At least they were given enough notice to allow for some sort of closure and not just pulled in the middle of a story arc.
Do you think Fox pulled the license due to their upcoming buyout, the new soft reboot of the series, or another reason entirely? Share your thoughts below!
Source: CBR
