One of Archie Comics’ most popular characters, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, has been missing from The CW’s Archie-themed drama series Riverdale. Now she is getting her own series.
The CW has put in development The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, eyed as a companion series to Riverdale for the 2018-19 season. It comes from the same team as Riverdale: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. TV, with Aguirre-Sacasa, who penned the Riverdale pilot, and Lee Toland Krieger, who directed it, reprising their roles on the Sabrina pilot.
A dark drama in the horror genre, The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina is worlds away from the bubbly 1996 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch comedy series starring Melissa Joan Hart. The new project reimagines the origin and adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch as a dark coming-of-age story that traffics in horror, the occult and, of course, witchcraft. Tonally in the vein of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, this adaptation finds Sabrina wrestling to reconcile her dual nature — half-witch, half-mortal — while standing against the evil forces that threaten her, her family and the daylight world humans inhabit.
With The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, the CW is following a different model, the one it used for Arrow companion The Flash, which filmed a standalone pilot. The lead character, played by Grant Gustin, did appear on Arrow before launching his own series. That may also happen with Sabrina on the upcoming second season on Riverdale though that is still TBD.
This is the second series offshoot in the works at the CW for the 2018-19 season, along with the Supernatural spinoff Wayward Sisters, which will be introduced as a planted spinoff episode of the mothership series.
