‘Riverdale’ Producers Talk ‘Reinvigorating’ the Familiar Archie Comics Brand

TCA 2017: “We can kind of go anywhere … all the walls have broken down in ‘Archie,'” Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa says

Riverdale
CW

With its central murder mystery and film noir tone, The CW’s new drama “Riverdale” might seem like an unexpected direction to take the Archie Comics brand, but don’t be so quick to judge, the show’s producers say.

According to Archie Comics Chief Creative Officer and “Riverdale” executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, this is just another step in the evolution of the Archie that fans have come to know and love.

“For the last seven years we’ve been reinvigorating and changing,” Aguirre-Sacasa said at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour on Sunday. “We can kind of go anywhere right now … All the walls have broken down in ‘Archie.’”

Archie Comics CEO and Publisher Jon Goldwater agreed, saying that the fan response to the continued evolution of the brand has largely been positive.

“People were thrilled that we changed it,” he said. “You can only go down the road for so long, and then you need to change the dynamic … To be candid, I’m anticipating the same great backlash to ‘Riverdale.’”

The most important part of the Archie brand, Aguirre-Sacasa said, is not tone or genre but the characters themselves. He pointed to a recent boundary-pushing storyline from the comics as a perfect example of this.

“The big leap for us publishing was when we did ‘Afterlife with Archie,’ which is Archie in the zombie apocalypse,” he said. “There was a lot of skepticism … [and then] the books started coming out and there was a sea change, people started to really, really love the book.”

“He was still the character we knew. He was still a good kid trying to do the right thing,” he said.

And according to Aguirre-Sacasa, this is just the beginning. In addition to an “Archie” Broadway musical, currently being written by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, he hopes to add more unexpected adaptations of familiar Archie brands.

“We have so many great characters … We definitely want to do something with Sabrina,” he said, referring to “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.”

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