Ideas for Faith were utilised in Dark Horse Comics' Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight; ideas for Spike featured in IDW Publishing's Angel: After the Fall; and characters and plotlines developed for Ripper were adapted for Dark Horse's Angel & Faith.
Six scripts were completed by members of Mutant Enemy and in 2004 a four-minute presentation was produced (which was distributed only within the industry).
Tim Minear was behind an idea for a Buffy spinoff in 2003 featuring Eliza Dushku as the popular antihero slayer Faith.
Ideas intended for the spin-off were later borrowed in small part by Brian K. Vaughan for his "No Future for You" arc in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight.
Ripper was originally a proposed television show based upon the character of Rupert Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (created by Joss Whedon).
[4] Giles, played by British actor Anthony Stewart Head, was nicknamed 'Ripper' while he was dabbling in the occult during his rebellious youth.
Whedon said that the show would be in the tradition of "classic English ghost stories" and would explore the theme of loneliness.
Head described the idea as being like "Cracker with ghosts";[5] Whedon elaborated on some of the themes he had planned for the series: "The people who live there, it's all very isolated.
"[6] It was later reported that Whedon had written the two-hour pilot, and that Espenson and other Buffy staff writers had penned story outlines for other potential episodes.
[4] However, Whedon was then involved in his new TV series Dollhouse which ended in 2010 and comic book Buffy Season 8.
Whedon announced plans for a Ripper series as soon as Head left Buffy in 2001 to return to his home in England.
[9] However, in a BBC interview in April 2008, Head stated that, "Creator Joss Whedon is busy with another project, I'm tied up too, so at the moment I'd just say that it's still out there.
"[10] In this same interview, Head mentioned that Whedon had discussed the project with Doctor Who and Torchwood producer Julie Gardner: "Originally, when he pitched it to me, it was a series, and it was Giles as this sad, lonely man in England without a real reason to be.
He told me this story that he had written, and it's absolutely beautiful, and I hope that one day it gets made, whether it's in the guise of Ripper or whether we just tell it as a one-off TV movie.
With the cancellation of Dollhouse, Whedon had been locked in talks over the rights issues of the character of Rupert Giles.
This was the only hurdle with the BBC having funding, location and local production team in place, with Whedon delivering the initial script.
"[14] In 2012, content for the Ripper TV series began to be adapted for the comic book Angel & Faith, which depicts Angel's quest to resurrect Giles, while living in Giles' London home, which passed on to his primary inheritor, Faith Lehane.
[15] Jane Espenson has said that back when the series Buffy was nearing its end, "I think Marti talked with Joss about Slayer School, I assume there was some back-and-forth pitching.
He stated that in 2004, when he was asked by Joss Whedon if he would be willing to be cast as Spike in future projects, he replied that he would be able to portray him for up to seven years after the end of the Angel series.
Whedon has even mentioned he might interlink the Spike story with that yet to be told in Buffy comics he will be writing for Dark Horse in 2007.
[23] Tim Minear revealed in late 2005 that Whedon had asked him if he "wanted to write and direct some 'blond vampire movie thing'.
During March 2006, Whedon appeared on the UK TV Channel, MTV Screenplay, announcing that he was still trying to get Spike made.
"[28] In June 2006, Whedon also said that funding was a problem: "There are certain characters I've been saving because I thought I might make movies about them, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen.