It's a reboot in a sense that it's a fresh start but within the continuity of the original show where new viewers will be able to hop on board without experiencing the original.
From a nuts and bolts standpoint, this reboot is going to be incredibly difficult to market. The original show started back in the late 90s. The then "WB" had zero competition for younger viewership. The emergence of a "4th" major network, Fox, showed more aggressive and adult oriented content could thrive in a mainstream network environment. Back when BTVS started, the average American adult did not own a computer. When the show ended, a majority of Americans were still on dial up internet.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the time line practicality of a "reboot" If you were 15 when this showed aired in it's mid run, now you are in your 30s and still in your prime earning years. You are still in the most desirable marketing demographics. But the swell of original content now has made audience capture quite fierce. Also part of BTVS success was it covered a certain complexity of "coming of age" The dynamic was "meta" level engagement, but for groups. Now in modern times, it's isolated to the individual. Much of that is based on an entire generation socialized and normalized to "retro enforcement" of the Cancel Culture that pushes people into isolation. When someone wants to hunt you down now, they are going to go back 5 years ago to something you said back then, and try to grind you with a purity test solely on that. One wrinkle of a forum like this that has survived this long, is that there are things that you could normally say and talk about in these SSF forums back in 2009 that would get you banned immediately today. ( It's not that simple, that's a distinction, not a broad scale criticism, these forums are now monetized and it's not so simple to hold member retention in this format)
If one parses down the structure in what makes someone like Mr. Beast successful ( engagement optimized for appealing to budding narcissists) , it's in stark contrast to what made BTVS so beloved in it's original run in it's time and place. I'm not saying a reboot can't technically find a large viewership, that pleases new fans and old ones alike, but what will appeal to a younger audience, in how engagement works more optimally for them today, will likely naturally alienate the legacy fanbase. What is the value of "coming of age" tropes when the average young person has Jordan Peterson or other resources at their fingertips at any time? I've always held Joss Whedon to be a phenomenal screen writer, but he had a crap ton of luck to break through when he did. He had good timing on his side. A "reboot" will not have good timing on it's side.
One of the reasons that shows like Severance and Squid Game hit so hard and become runaway hits is they have cross over appeal to an entire generation of young people, who lived their lives as true "digital natives", all entering the practical timeline of entering the full time workforce together. Most of us here are 40-60, about that range at this point. We can appreciate Squid Game because some of it's themes are universal. But for someone who is 22 years old and in Japan or South Korea, some of the core tone encapsulates a staggering amount of their day to day lived experience. Severance hits hard because I can market
"a dying empire led by bad people" or late stage capitalism at full grind. For an entirely different generation from us, it's their more hard edged version of Mike Judge's Office Space. I'm not sure I could market, in current times, quippy humor and vampirism as a proxy for social activism the way Alan Ball, Ryan Murphy and Anne Rice have warped it.
The Blair Witch Project only really can generate steam in the era/timeline in which it was released. I really can't blame a 17 year old today who would watch it and not understand how it became such a huge hit. During the original BTVS run, I like many elements of it. There were fun things and cool characters at times and some pretty good dialogue for it's era, but it's just going to be really hard to translate for both older legacy fans and newer young fans together in 2025 and forward.
Like I said, I'll hope for the best and give it a chance, but there are some big hurdles here. These kind of reboots are driven more by bean counters and actuaries than practical high level creatives. Nostalgia cannot be used as a fix all shortcut for logistics, current zeitgeist and functional nuance. But when people see dollars signs, I guess they are going to try anyway. Let's hope for the best.
