In 2001 Joss Whedon got together with Jeph Loeb to create an animated version of his succesful live action series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show would would be voiced by the original cast of the live action show, and episodes written by the staff writers. As with the live action show, FOX were at the helm and wanted the show for their children's channel, FOX kids. Unfortunately, they changed their minds and decided to shop the show to other networks, who unfortunately were not interested, and production died.

Joss Whedon, however, knew when he had a good thing and held on to the idea and when FOX once again became interested in 2004 a four minute pilot was made featuring voice work from most of the main cast, additionally, six scripts being written by Jane Espenson and Drew Greenberg amongst others. Once again, however, FOX decided against purchasing the series being unable to find a suitable time-slot for the programme.

Joss Whedon has commented about the demise of the series thusly:

"We just couldn't find a home for (it). We had a great animation director, great visuals, six or seven hilarious scripts from our own staff -- and nobody wanted it. I was completely baffled. I felt like I was sitting there with bags of money and nobody would take them from me. It was a question of people either not wanting it or not being able to put up the money because it was not a cheap show. One thing I was very hard-line about was, I didn't want people to see it if if looked like crap. I wanted it to be on a level with "Animaniacs" or "Batman: The Animated Series." And that's a little pricier. But I just don't think it's worth doing unless it's beautiful to look at as well as fun."