Afterlife With Archie, the zombie horror series that put “Archie Horror” on the map a decade ago, is coming to Disney+ from showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and executive producer Greg Berlanti. The duo, who served as showrunner and producer on Riverdale and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, got a script-to-series commitment for the show, which will be an hour-long drama based on the comic books by Aguirre-Sacasa and artist Francesco Francavilla.
The news comes as Disney+ is reveling in the success of Marvel Zombies, also based on a comic that became a surprise hit. The animated series, based on the comics by Robert Kirkman and featuring art by Sean Phillips, was Disney+’s most-watched TV series last week.
Set in an alternate version of the Archie Comics universe, Afterlife With Archie was written by Aguirre-Sacasa, who also penned Archie’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comic. The success of the horror comics was key to Aguirre-Sacasa becoming Archie’s chief creative officer in 2014.
While Aguirre-Sacasa was the executive producer of both Riverdale and Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina series, it’s unlikely cast members from those shows will reprise their roles in Afterlife With Archie.
Riverdale put Archie characters back on the pop culture map in a big way, running for seven seasons, spinning off Katy Keene, and becoming one of Netflix’s biggest shows for most of its run. Since the end of Riverdale, Archie and the gang got a feature film at Netflix starring a Bollywood cast.
Originally, Aguirre-Sacasa had planned to use Afterlife With Archie to fuel special Halloween-themed episodes of Riverdale every year, comparing the idea to The Simpsons‘s “Treehouse of Horror” episodes. That never happened, and it wasn’t long before rumors of an Afterlife With Archie stand-alone series started to circulate.
Afterlife With Archie is the second big sale for Berlanti and WBTV to Disney in recent months; the producer co-wrote Foster Dade, an upcoming Hulu pilot.
Afterlife With Archie began its life as a parody cover, with Francavilla making a “zombie variant” of the magazine-format comic Life With Archie. It was a revolutionary title for Archie Comics, being the company’s first book aimed completely at an older audience and sold exclusively in direct market comic shops.
According to Deadline, who first reported the Disney+ deal, Aguirre-Sacasa and Jimmy Gibbons will executive produce Afterlife through Aguirre-Sacasa’s Muckle Man Productions; Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Leigh London Redman will executive produce for Berlanti Productions; and Archie boss Jon Goldwater will executive produce via Archie Comics Studios.
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