In ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer,’ now 20 years old, gone is the humor and self-awareness of ‘Scream,’ replaced by a grim seriousness and near-total failure to generate any creative new ideas for its characters or plot.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer got another turn in that vampire-dusting sun with the recent 20th anniversary, and all those old romances remain as divisive as ever. That said, when Sarah Michelle Gellar plays “marry, shag, kill” with the Buffy trio of Angel, Spike and Xander … well, the outcome probably isn’t going to shock you.
Every movie and TV fan has their pick of sacred properties Hollywood dare not reboot (or revive), and a great many would likely point to Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a Whedon property best-left alone. Sarah Michelle Gellar has her own idea of whether revisiting Buffy might be worthwhile today, and where she hopes the character ended up.
Cruel Intentions was so much more than the movie where Sarah Michelle Gellar kissed Selma Blair. (And yet, at the same time, it was and is very much that.) A retelling of Les Liaisons dangereuses set among hot, rich teens in New York, it brought a welcome dose of luridness and eroticism to neighborhood cineplexes in addition to scoring many a makeout sesh between randy adolescents during the late ’90s. Both campy and soapy, the yarn of seduction and betrayal has remained a roaring good time even as it’s turned into a time capsule of its era and all the attendant, difficult-to-look-at fashions. But a good time is all it’s going to be, as recent news indicates.
It’s one thing for TV to mine intellectual property for a new series, and another to actually recruit stars of the original production to continue the story. Cruel Intentions apparently couldn’t hack it with Sarah Michelle Gellar, however, as NBC has officially opted to pass on its sequel series adaptation.
It feels like forever and a day we’ve been dividing ships of one dystopian and/or supernatural couple or another, but certainly Joss Whedon deserves credit for Buffy the Vampire Slayer cementing the trend. Over a decade later, fans are still torn over which en-souled vampire marks Buffy’s one true love, but Joss Whedon has formally made his choice. Sound the alarm, and get out your stakes.
Earlier this month, NBC placed an order for a Cruel Intentions TV pilot that would act as a sort of sequel to the 1999 film, and today brings the fortuitous news that the central pillar of this grand monument to teen horniness will return for the second go-round. Now comes word that original star Sarah Michelle Gellar will reprise her role as Kathryn Merteuil, the queen-bitch rich kid meddling in everyone’s affairs with her sexual scheming.