Last weekend was a good news/bad news situation for fans of Joss Whedon-created television shows. A new Firefly animated series is in the works, but the planned Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot has been shelved.

The Firefly news came on Sunday, March 15, 2026, from the cast themselves. They announced that they are working on an animated Firefly TV series featuring the original cast of Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite, Summer Glau, Adam Baldwin, and Sean Maher.

The animated show will take place between the original Firefly TV series that ran for one season in 2002 and the feature film, Serenity, that was released in 2005.

Showrunners on the series are Tara Butters (Agent Carter, Dollhouse) and Marc Guggenheim (Arrow, Flash). ShadowMachine is the animation studio on the project and Fillion’s Collision33 is developing it with 20th Television Animation.

Firefly only lasted for 14 episodes when it originally ran in 2002, but in that short time, it developed a loyal fan following. The space cowboy series is set hundreds of years in the future, following a crew of rogues who work outside of the law, flying from planet to planet to avoid the oppressive government.

The animated series news came via the casts’ social media, on Fillion and Tudyk’s Once We Were Spacemen podcast socials, and from the cast during their panel at Awesome Con in Washington, DC. The cast has been teasing the announcement for weeks through videos of Fillion knocking on their front doors and having brief conversations hinting at a shared project. In the announcement, Fillion encouraged fans to like, comment, and share the post from the Once We Were Spacemen page.

Before the Firefly news dropped, Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar announced that Hulu is not moving forward with the Buffy reboot.

Titled Buffy: New Sunnydale was planned to star Ryan Kiera Armstrong (Skeleton Crew) as new Slayer, Nova, with Gellar reprising her role as Buffy to be the young hero’s mentor. Oscar winning director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) was set to direct the series, and Nora and Lila Zuckerman were set to write and showrun the series. Gellar, Zhao, the Zuckermans, and Dolly Parton were executive producers on the project.

The original Buffy series ran for seven seasons from 1997 to 2003, following Buffy Summers as she fights demons, vampires, and the forces of darkness as the Vampire Slayer. She was joined by her Watcher and friends to defeat monsters who preyed on humans and, in some cases, tried to end the world. The show also starred Alyson Hannigan, Nicholas Brendon, Anthony Head, David Boreanaz and Charisma Carpenter (both of whom went on to star in the Angel series), Emma Caulfield, Amber Benson, James Marsters, Michelle Tractenberg, and Seth Green.

Gellar announced on social media that the new show was not moving forward. She ended her message by saying, “And I promise, if the apocalypse actually coms, you could still beep me,” referencing a popular quote from the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.