Still hope for Buffy spin-off Ripper

Anthony Stewart Head is currently in the US promoting the TV show Merlin, in which he plays the grumpy King Uther Pendragon. Merlin will be shown on NBC this summer and premiere’s on 21st June at 20:00.

During his timetable of interviews to promote the show, Head has revealed that he is still hopeful that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off show Ripper could still be produced one day. Head says he was still discussing the spin-off with Buffy and Dollhouse creator Joss Whedon, just prior to Dollhouse going into production.

Head claims that Merlin producer Julie Gardner is keen to see the project develop.

“I actually introduced Joss [Whedon] to Julie Gardner, who was the executive producer on [Merlin] with the BBC,” he said.

“She has long wanted to do something with the project. There are obviously complications with Ripper, because there are lots of tie-ins. There’s Fox, there’s the Kuzuis [who own the rights to Buffy], there’s all sorts of stuff. Basically, it isn’t just the simple question of Joss making a series that he wants to make. As far as anything concerned with Buffy, there are a lot of people down the line that would have a say. That’s part of the equation, but we were sort of talking about what we might do with it. Pretty much at that point he had this conversation with Eliza [Dushku about Dollhouse], and the rest is history, for the moment.”

News spread of a Buffy spin-off back in 2001 when Head first left the show’s full time cast. The concept was to follow Head’s character, Rupert Giles back to England and produce the show there.

“Originally, when he pitched it to me, it was a series, and it was Giles as this sad, lonely man in England without a real reason to be,” Head said.

“It was pretty much ghost stories. Week by week, some ghost story would somehow affect him. Then he said he didn’t want to. By that time, I think he had been affected by Angel, the need to write a weekly story. I think he found at that point the drive was different, so he suggested this one film that we were going to make. He told me this story that he had written, and it’s absolutely beautiful, and I hope that one day it gets made, whether it’s in the guise of Ripper or whether we just tell it as a one-off TV movie. It’s a lovely, lovely story. It’s kind of a ghost story. It’s also about a man investigating his own soul, and it’s fascinating, lovely, sad, and it’s classic Joss Whedon. I hope we get to make it one day. From there on in, if it was successful, maybe he could have been convinced to do a series. As I say, now he’s back in the seat of doing a weekly series with Dollhouse; maybe he can be convinced otherwise. Never say never, but at the same time, I think it’s on a shelf for a while.”

As for Merlin, fans will be pleased to hear it has secured a second season which is currently in production. The show will return to UK screens later in the year, and they can look forward to guest appearances from Mackenzie Crook and Charles Dance.

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