How does Joss Whedon plan to settle in to his new television home, the testosterone-charged UPN, which has cage-matched its way into young men's hearts by featuring wrestlers who attack each other with metal chairs and talk trash between gulps of Bud?
By writing and directing a musical version of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," a singing and dancing episode that Whedon, the show's creator and executive producer, says he's been itching to do. A splash of "Rent," maybe some tap shoes, lots of feeling. Just right, Whedon hopes, for year six of what he describes as "one of the corniest and most overtly romantic series on TV."
Any second thoughts, UPN, about shelling out roughly $2.3 million an episode to woo the cult fave from its fiercest rival, the WB? None, says Dean Valentine, UPN's president. "I couldn't have been more psyched when I heard about this episode," Valentine said of the musical extravaganza, which is still in the formative stages. "I love any kind of fun twist on normal TV. Also, Joss is one of the few people who could do this and get away with it, and 'Buffy' is one of the few shows that could attempt this and have the audience go along with it."
That episode had been churning around in Whedon's mind for some time, long before he knew that "Buffy" would land at UPN, after a near-bloody scuffle with the WB, where the show's fifth season wraps Tuesday.
For a guy who's quick with quips and whose series relies as heavily on humor as on tension, Whedon couldn't find anything funny about the fight over "Buffy."
"It was debilitating, quite frankly," he said just days after the announcement late last month that the show's WB run would end. "The whole thing was wicked hurtful. But I just want to tell stories, and now I can continue doing that, so I'm pleased."
The tenor of those stories won't be changed by UPN's male-skewing lineup. If anything, the network will mold the network to accommodate "Buffy," a comedy-action-horror series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar that draws about 4.4 million viewers a week.
"You won't see the Rock guest-starring on 'Buffy,"' Valentine said. "We would never want to change the very thing that attracted us to this show. Having a show of this quality will change us ... enabling us to attract more top-notch producers and broaden our audience and speak to young women."
