Posted in: Comics, san diego comic con | Tagged: alex segura, archie comics, comic con, Comics, entertainment, riverdale, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, san diego, san diego comic con, sdcc, sdcc '16, sdcc16

The Time-Travelling Archie Movie That Never Was – The Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa Panel AT SDCC

By Hugh Sheridan

The Spotlight on Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa panel in SDCC just wrapped up. The Afterlife with Archie writer and showrunner of the upcoming Riverdale TV show was interviewed by Alex Segura and took questions from the audience.

The biggest take aways:

–          Sabrina the Teenage Witch "may very well" show up in the Riverdale TV show. There doesn't seem to be any rights issue conflicts apparently.

–          Pitch Perfect director Jason Moore and Sacasa at one point were developing an Archie movie that involved him travelling through time.

–          The writers have decided who the murderer is on Riverdale and his/her identity will be revealed in the final thirteenth episode of the first season .

–          The next Arc on Afterlife with Archie is titled "I am Archie" and is a play on Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend".

The panel discussion went through Sacasa's career and he talked a bit about his first work at Marvel and the controversy over the firing of Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo by Bill Jemas to make way for his planned run with artist Steve McNiven.

This was a decision he was not involved in (originally his pitch was to be a separate series which is actually how it was published eventually). He says he was "shocked" by the reaction and "did not know about the passion of the comic community"  and there was a "huge backlash" and that was a terrible way to enter the business. He went on to work for Marvel for 10-12 years though, he says.

He got in to working with Archie through his stint as a staff writer on the Glee TV show. He set up the Glee Archie crossover. Ryan Murphy,Glee showrunner simply said "lets do it" and his co-operation allowed them to cut through the endless red tape that tends to stymie such projects.

This led to a "legendary" lunch (according to Segura) between Archie Comics head John Goldwater and Sacasa where in 20 minutes they came up with the idea for "Afterlife with Archie". Sacasa was meeting with Goldwater to discuss plans for an Archie movie and he brought up a Francesco Francavilla's horror variant cover for Life with Archie he loved. Sacasa had bought the comic based on the cover and was disappointed to find out that it was just a variant and that the story inside was unconnected. Inspiration hit them both at the same "oh my god this is such a great idea we have to do this as a comic"

Sacasa credits Francavilla hugely with the project "he created, even in that one cover, the whole world" he says.

Originally the title he wanted to use was Crypt of Archie, to acknowledge the EC Comics tone he was trying for, but Goldwater immediately thought of the Afterlife with Archie name which is "so much better" according to Sacasa.

Discussion moved to the Riverdale TV show and its long development. It started out as a movie proposal. Sacasa and Jason Moore director of Pitch Perfect were walking out of a screening of the Perks of Being a Wallflower movie which they both loved and they were hit with the notion of doing something that made the Archie characters "real in that way".

This evolved in to the pitch of doing Archie as an "emotional coming of age John Hughes style movie". Moore was a hot property after Pitch Perfect and Warner Brothers bought the idea. However the project stalled after one particularly disastrous development meeting .

Sacasa recounted the hilarious- in- retrospect story. A major WB executive (who went unnamed) asked them to come in and "discuss" the project which immediately "raised a red flag" according to Sacasa. He went on to tell them that Archie was not the type of film Warners was releasing at the moment and that the studio preferred big movies such as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. He encouraged them to "think big" and suggested they consider a "time travel element". He also said "I am not a writer but you know what I'm really in to at the moment – Portals –maybe you can use them somehow".

Sacasa says he was waiting for someone to jump out and say "surprise' the situation seemed so ridiculous. The executive capped it off by saying "have you guys heard about the latest Archie comic – the Archie Zombie book – now that's a movie! that's a concept!" oblivious to the fact that he was talking to the writer of that book.

Moore and Sacasa actually developed the time travel concept for a few months. It would have featured Archie and the gang in different time periods, the 40s the 50s and the 60s but eternally young. Eventually they lost enthusiasm for the project as it drifted away from their original concept and when Moore left it died.

However when producer Sarah Schechter (who had originally bought the pitch at WB) went to work with TV producer Greg Berlanti Sacasa gave her a call. Berlanti worked on Dawson's Creek and Jack and Bobby and created Everwood, nowadays he is deeply in the comic book adaptation game producing all the WBTV shows so Sacasa knew he was perfect for the project.

Berlanti and Schechter were enthusiastic for the idea of the TV show – based on Sacasa's original idea of a John Hughes style coming of age story but Berlanti had one proviso "you are going to need a murder mystery".

The way TV works now people need a over-arching plot structure like that to keep them engaged he explained. Initially reluctant, Sacasa says he came around after a long development process ("at one point the show was about Archie's Dad who was a cop while his mom was a medical examiner, then it became Archie as teen mayor of Riverdale") and he has now very happy with the dark and weird elements that he has been able to put in the series. He compares it to "Stand By Me" which is a teen drama with the macabre element of a dead body driving the story.

The panel finished up with Segura asking Sacasa if he had any advice for upcoming creators? "Follow your passion- never give up" says Sacasa as it took him 6 to 7 years of work to get Riverdale developed and he never lost faith in the project.

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