A few years back Joss Whedon, creator of the eternally-popular “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and its spin-off “Angel”, was trying to convince (in-joke here for fans) ‘the powers that be’ to let Spike back into the building.

Alas, none of Whedon’s proposed one-off telemovies (he also wanted to do one with Alyson Hannigan’s Willow, apparently) came to fruition. Seems The CW didn’t share the fans’ thirst for more.

James Marsters, the man behind Buffy’s spiky-hand former lover (the other one), tells IESB that too much time has probably passed for him to play an ageless immortal vampire again. But he’s not ruling it out completely.

‘’I think if we did that we’d have to do some camera tests with lighting because Spike doesn’t age and I have’’, says Marsters in an interview for his new film, “Dragonball : Evolution”. “Or, you could say he’s drinking pig’s blood, so he’s aging slowly. I always thought that one of the cool things about being a vampire is that you’re immortal and, if you take that away, it’s not quite so cool. The good news is that I never got any fill-light. Sarah Michelle Gellar got all the fill-light and I got all the slant shadow light because they wanted me villainous, which was cool. If they put me in that costume and actually gave me some fill-light, it might actually look about the same now. But, we’d have to test that because I don’t want Spike to age.”

A couple of years ago creator Whedon seemed hopeful that Spike, and some of the other “Buffy” characters, might live on in the form of telemovies.

“I mostly miss all the people [there], but if things go the way I hope they do – I might not miss them as much,” Whedon told Moviehole in 2005, raising an all-telling eyebrow.

“I can only teasingly hint, unfortunately, until it’s got backing and we’ve got a schedule and a contract. I have been talking to some of the actors, writers, and some executives and are trying to put something together — but it’s not happening fast. [But no] I haven’t left the Buffyverse behind.”

Needless to say, never happened. And I think if you were to ask Joss today, he’d be the first to tell you it’s unlikely they – the telemovies – ever will.

In related news, new (as opposed to one’s a month old) rumours about a “Buffy” movie have surfaced over the past couple of days. It goes without saying, they’re not true. Someone-who-should-know laughed all the report when I sent him the link. Think that says it all.