Unnamed black actor will reportedly take role filled by Sarah Michelle Gellar in 1990s

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Television’s habit of twinning teenagers with vampires, which became so voguish more than 20 years ago with the success of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, just will not lie down and die.

The show, which starred Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy and the English actor Anthony Head in the role of charming “watcher” Rupert Giles, is now to be re-booted, it has been announced.

According to entertainment industry journal the Hollywood Reporter, an unnamed black actor has been lined up for the lead role in a “contemporary” version of the story.

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The drama, created by Joss Whedon, was first broadcast in 1997 and won devoted followers around the world, following as it did in the supernatural wake of the teenage vampire film The Lost Boys, a cinematic hit with young audiences a decade earlier in 1987.

When Buffy finished battling the undead in 2003, the Twilight series of films based on the books of Stephanie Meyer took up the ghostly reins.

Whedon will executive produce the series, penned by Agents Of SHIELD writer Monica Owusu-Breen.

However, it seems not everyone is welcoming the reboot.

Writer Michael Patterson tweeted: “I’m sorry but literally nobody asked for a Buffy reboot. A revival … yes. But not a reboot. The original TV series told a perfect story and did everything it set out to do (revolutionising television in the process). Why would you mess with such greatness?”

Author Lilliam Rivera added:

Lilliam Rivera (@lilliamr) I loved Buffy. But you know what else I love? When Hollywood looks at new stories by people of color instead of rebooting old ones and changing the casting.

Gellar, who played vampire-battling high school student Buffy, recently marked 21 years since the first episode of the show by sharing snaps from behind the scenes.

She told Entertainment Weekly: “It’s the ultimate metaphor: horrors of adolescence manifesting through these actual monsters. It’s the hardest time of life.”

Head recently landed a role as a smooth-talker in Radio 4 soap the Archers.

The new series will have a least one new competitor when it arrives. Sky has already released a trailer for the fantasy drama A Discovery of Witches, a series based on Deborah Harkness’s All Souls trilogy of novels.

Scholarly witch Diana Bishop is to be played by Teresa Palmer, while Matthew Goode takes the role of the enigmatic vampire Matthew Clairmont, her romantic interest.