By Matthew Jackson, Source: Blastr.com
There’s been so much Avengers this and Cabin in the Woods that lately that it’s easy to forget how many other potential projects Joss Whedon is still juggling. There’s that cool web series he wants to do with Warren Ellis, the inevitable return of Dr. Horrible , and then there’s that long-dormant Buffy spinoff starring everyone’s favorite badass librarian.
Whedon’s been talking about a spinoff starring Buffy’s mentor and teacher Rupert Giles (played by Anthony Stewart Head) since back in 2001. The project would be called Ripper—a nickname taken from Giles’ early days as an occultist bad boy—and would focus on Giles alone in England, struggling with loneliness and getting into ghostly adventures. Sometimes it’s a series, sometimes it’s a miniseries, sometimes it’s a TV or straight-to-DVD movie, but it’s never really gone away. Then Whedon got the whole Earth’s Mightiest Heroes gig and we all sort of forgot about Ripper because our heads were filled with dreams of wise-cracking Iron Man and Whedon-style Hulk.
But at least one person hasn’t fully forgotten yet: Whedon himself. In a new interview that (predictably) mostly covers Avengers and Cabin, he responded to the idea that we should maybe all just let our Ripper dreams fade away with this:
“No, the thing about Ripper—the essence of it—is that the BBC came to me at one point like, ‘It doesn’t have to be Ripper. It can just be [Anthony Stewart Head], and there’s magic, and he’s Tony, cuz he’s awesome.’ And that’s the thing: For some reason, he keeps getting sexier every year. That’s not happening to me! I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’ And that story was always about a mature guy who’s lived, and about the choices he’s made. So you could make that now, or you could make it 10 years from now. And I’ve tortured Tony more than any other living human with, ‘We’re definitely gonna do this!’ Because I thought we were. He’s working so much, though, I’d feel too guilty. But that’s the thing with Ripper: It doesn’t go away in my head because he’s still right for it, and he could still bring it.”
We all want a kickass Buffy spinoff, but hey, we’d take an unrelated Joss Whedon-helmed supernatural story starring Head too. Now if Whedon can just find some time for that between a web series, a new Shakespeare film, a sci-fi romance, Buffy comics, Angel comics, Dr. Horrible 2, relentless questions about a Firefly reunion and the inevitable Avengers sequel.
Yeah … we might have to wait for Ripper a little while longer.
