The CW has ordered a pilot for Riverdale, comic-book-to-TV-series mastermind Greg Bertlanti’s “surprising and subversive take” on the quietly bizarre Archie universe. Scripted by Glee writer and Archie Comics Chief Creative Officer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the series will explore the suburban madness—zombies, gun-toting vigilantes, hamburger-loving, crown-wearing time cops—that lurks just beneath regular teen Archie Andrews’ various romantic squabbles.
The last time we reported on Riverdale, it was being developed over at Fox, but apparently the rabid Mr. Weatherbee fans at Warner Bros. just couldn’t stand to let another comic book property—even one you’d find at the bottom of the spinner rack at the family grocery store—slip through its fingers. Riverdale’s just one of several pilots the network has picked up this week, ranging from sci-fi shows and relationship dramas to the network’s more usual, “All monsters, all the time” wheelhouse.
For example: Transylvania, a period horror drama about a young woman who travels to the eponymous region in search of her missing father (and then some monsters show up). The network also picked up No Tomorrow, from Jane The Virgin alums Corinne Brinkerhoff, Scott McCabe and Tory Stanton, about a woman who falls for a guy who believes the world is about to end (but in, like, a fun, let’s cross stuff off our bucket list kind of way), and an untitled show about astronauts investigating a missing colony on Mars, currently enjoying its reign as Hollywood’s most buzzed-about celestial object.
Yesterday’s pilot pick-ups join two other projects the network grabbed earlier this season: a supernatural thriller from Scream writer Kevin Williamson, and a TV remake of the Dennis Quaid time travel movie Frequency, all of which will now have to live with the vague, Jughead-esque indignity of playing second fiddle to the ginger-haired majesty of Archie.