Netflix has teamed with Riverdale creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to craft a dark, horrific take on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Titled Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, this new Sabrina series is said to be tonally in the vein of ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE EXORCIST – and if that holds true, it has been given the perfect release date.
Netflix has announced that the ten episode first season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina will drop on the streaming service on October 26th, just in time for some Halloween binge watching.
Kiernan Shipka (pictured above in THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER) stars as a Sabrina who is
wrestling to reconcile her dual nature as a half-witch, half-mortal, while fighting the evil forces that threaten her, her family and the daylight world humans inhabit.
Sabrina Spellman is described as an empowered young woman — half-human, half-witch — who is just beginning her dark education as a sorceress, even as she tries to maintain a normal life as a sophomore at Baxter High. Intelligent, compassionate and brave to the point of recklessness, Sabrina is all that stands between us and the forces of darkness that threaten our world.
Also in the cast are Miranda Otto as Sabrina's disciplinarian aunt Zelda; Lucy Davis as her nurturing aunt Hilda; Ross Lynch as her love interest Harvey Kinkle; Jaz Sinclair as her best friend Rosalind Walker; Chance Perdomo as her warlock cousin Ambrose; Michelle Gomez as Sabrina's teacher Mary Wardell, who becomes possessed by the devil's handmaiden Madam Satan; Richard Coyle as Father Blackwood, High Priest of the Church of Night and Dean of the Academy of the Unseen Arts, a man with a "terrifying dark agenda"; Bronson Pinchot as Baxter High's villainous puritanical principal George Hawthorne; and Tati Gabrielle as Prudence, leader of a trio of witches called the Weird Sisters and a character who has a possibly life-threatening grudge against Sabrina.
I have some interest in seeing how this show turns out (that ROSEMARY'S BABY / THE EXORCIST comparison really caught my attention), so I'll probably be checking it out when it reaches Netflix this fall.
Netflix has already ordered a second season, which will also consist of ten episodes.