sabrina_spellman

sabrina_spellman

The CW show Riverdale has been a surprising hit.  If you’re not familiar with it, it modernizes the Archie comics from the 90s, with more drama and some murder mystery thrown in.  It appeared as though the CW was looking to develop other shows that are similar to this one, including one based on the character of Sabrina Spellman – The Teenage Witch.  This was expected to start developing in September, instead, however, that show will be coming to Netflix with 20 episodes.  If you were hoping for something similar to the Melissa Joan Hart version of the show, you might be disappointed.  It’s more likely that Netflix will base the show on the darker comic book – Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

sabrina_spellman

In this version, Sabrina Spellman battles evil forces while also trying to be a normal half-human/half witch.  The downside to Netflix picking it up?  There is no opportunity to crossover with Riverdale.  Is that ok?  I think so.  While I love a good cross-over and even spin-off, I think that they can also be too overrated.  Sometimes its nice for all the characters and storyline to remain in one show.  If I was a writer for a show, I would think that it would be difficult to write when there are crossovers.  Just in terms of logistics.  The writers for both shows would have to get together as there are likely details and nuances that only they know about their own show/characters.  This isn’t a big surprise though.  Netflix seems to be picking up these kinds of shows and doing some incredible things with them.  I have said many times that they seem to have a knack for finding or coming up with original content and making it amazing.

sabrina_spellman

While we don’t necessarily know when the show will be ready to air, this is what we do know – the writer’s room for the series is expected to open up this week. From there, it’s expected that filming will start in February and continue into October.  Which does sound like a long time to film, but it’s also expected that Season 1 and Season 2 are going to be filming back to back.  This means that there is a possibility that we might have Season 1 before the end of 2018.  It feels like it’s a long time from now, but we will be writing about this in a few months and it won’t have seemed that long.

Getting back to this spin-off idea for a moment.  I said before it wasn’t possible for the two shows to cross over, but you can’t really rule that out completely.  I haven’t heard this, but perhaps Netflix could take over Riverdale.  We’ve seen that with other shows in terms of their getting picked up by another network.  Again, I’m not saying that’s the case, but let’s keep the door open for that possibility.  Sabrina Spellman did, after all, make a cameo in Riverdale in the form of a comic book cover. So maybe my theory is a little bit far-fetched, but it’s still fun to think about the possibilities.

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