Updated

Updated · Hollywood Reporter · Jul 20

Disney+ Greenlights 10-Issue Afterlife With Archie Series for Fall 2027, Reuniting Riverdale Team

Updated

Updated · Hollywood Reporter · Jul 20

Disney+ Greenlights 10-Issue Afterlife With Archie Series for Fall 2027, Reuniting Riverdale Team

Q: Will this zombie series be a faithful comic adaptation or a complete reboot of the 'Riverdale' universe?

It appears to be a faithful adaptation of the **“Afterlife with Archie”** comic, not a reboot of the CW’s **“Riverdale”** universe. The strongest evidence is in how Disney+ and the producers are describing it: the series is explicitly based on Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla’s comic, and its announced premise matches the source material closely. In both versions, Sabrina’s spell goes wrong and unleashes the undead on Riverdale, forcing Archie and his friends into a survival story built around friendship, loyalty and horror. The involvement of the **“Riverdale”** and **“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”** creative team may make the project feel connected in tone, but that does not make it a continuation or reset of the earlier TV continuity. The reporting around the order points instead to a separate live-action adaptation of a specific Archie Horror title, likely with its own cast and continuity. That distinction matters because **“Riverdale”** itself was never a direct page-to-screen version of the comics; it was a looser reinterpretation. **“Afterlife with Archie,”** by contrast, is being sold as a direct adaptation of a defined comic storyline that already has a strong identity within the Archie Horror line. So the best reading of the available information is this: Disney+ is launching a new, comic-rooted Archie horror series, not rebuilding the old **“Riverdale”** TV universe from scratch.

3 articles · Updated · Hollywood Reporter · Jul 20

Fall 2027 is the target for Disney+’s newly greenlit Afterlife With Archie, a live-action series that brings Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Greg Berlanti’s Riverdale collaborators back to Archie Comics.
The adaptation turns Riverdale into a zombie apocalypse after a teen witch’s spell backfires, with Archie and his friends fighting to survive as loyalties and relationships fracture.
Aguirre-Sacasa will serve as showrunner and executive producer alongside Jimmy Gibbons, Berlanti Productions’ Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Leigh London Redman, and Archie Comics’ Jon Goldwater; Warner Bros. TV is the studio.
The pickup is notable because Disney+ rarely orders series from outside studios, even as it broadens beyond Marvel and revisits a comic first published in 2013 and collected across 10 issues.