News Buffy the Vampire Slayer Danny Strong Turned Down Writing the Buffy Revival to Rewrite Chess on Broadway Yes, Chess. The musical. Chess. By Molly Templeton | Published on October 8, 2025 Credit: 20th Century Fox Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: 20th Century Fox Television For Buffy fans, Danny Strong needs no introduction. In the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, Strong played Jonathan, a classmate of Buffy and the Scooby Gang who appeared fairly regularly over the course of the show’s early seasons before becoming a villain in the complicated sixth season. (One absolutely must nod to the fourth-season episode “Superstar,” in which he became the star for a brief moment.) Since then, Strong has become an award-winning writer and director. He co-wrote the adaptations of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Parts 1 and 2, co-created the series Empire, and has full creator credit on Dopesick, which won a pile of awards. His new project is a little different: He’s the writer behind an all-new version of the musical Chess on Broadway. But, as he told Playbill, he almost had a very different job this year. “I’ve never told anyone this before, but I was approached to write the Buffy revamp. They wanted me to be a part of bringing it back. And I was like, ‘hell no, I’m not touching that! Are you crazy? I’ll rewrite Chess, but I’m not gonna touch Buffy,’” Strong says. Some context for the less musically informed among us: Playbill’s Margaret Hall notes, “Chess has long been the poster child for beautiful but frustratingly broken musicals, with fans and critics alike praising the score while struggling to follow its story.” Buffy, on the other hand, is beloved in that way where people mostly don’t want to fix it. Which Strong clearly knows. He went on to say, “Those writers, they have a lot to live up to. It was a very wonderful show with a very unique tone. And I really hope it goes well for everyone, that the writers and the fans and Sarah have a wonderful experience like they had with the original show … It was clear to me that Chess was the project I could pour my heart into. That’s why I picked it, even if my bank account would have preferred I picked Buffy.” (A side note because I can’t help myself: This is not the first connection between Chess and Buffy. You might know the song “One Night in Bangkok” from Chess. A version of it was in a hit in the ’80s. That version was performed by Murray Head, who is the brother of Buffy’s Giles, Anthony Stewart Head. Carry on.) The Buffy reboot that Strong isn’t writing is in the hands of showrunners Lilla and Nora Zuckerman (Poker Face) and features original Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar alongside a new slayer played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong (Star Wars: Skeleton Crew). Hulu has ordered a pilot, but there’s no word yet if it will get picked up as a series. Chess opens on Broadway on October 15th. It took ten years to get there, but it’s there. Strong says, “When it was first announced that it was coming to Broadway, my response was as a Chess fan. I just started grinning like, ‘Oh my goodness, Chess is coming back.’ I almost forgot that I was the one bringing it back.” [end-mark] The post Danny Strong Turned Down Writing the <i>Buffy</i> Revival to Rewrite <i>Chess</i> on Broadway appeared first on Reactor.