Sabrina the Teenage Witch is coming back to the small screen. The CW is developing a project based on the Archie Comics’ character, but it’s not a reboot of the ’90s series led by Melissa Joan Hart. Touted as darker and grittier than the original sitcom about a magically-inclined high school student with a talking cat, the potential show, titled “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” is being “eyed as a companion series to ‘Riverdale’ for the 2018–19 season,” Deadline reports.
The pilot will be written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and directed by Lee Toland Krieger, the same tag-team that handled “Riverdale’s” pilot.
“The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” is said to be a “dark drama in the horror genre.” According to the source, the 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.”
“Riverdale’s” 13-episode freshman season featured three episodes directed by women and four written or co-written by women. The former puts the teen drama slightly above the broadcast average and the latter lags slightly behind. Hopefully the female-led “Sabrina” series will include more women working behind the scenes.
