As we all know by this point in time, Netflix has teamed with RIVERDALE creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to craft a dark, horrific take on SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH called CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA. And today we have word via Entertainment Weekly that the first season will feature an episode that pays homage to the well-known horror film directed by William Friedkin.
According to showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, each episode of the upcoming series is said to function as its own mini-movie. And one of those mini-movies will be inspired by THE EXORCIST.
Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa:
I love The Exorcist. It’s one of my favorite movies. We’re doing an homage to that; we’re doing an episode that’s like [The Exorcist].
As you might imagine, at this point in time all of us here at AITH can only speculate as to what exactly this means, and exactly how far the episode will take its homages to the classic (mucho R-rated) horror film. But we're all excited to find out next month!
Kiernan Shipka (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.
This new Sabrina series is said to be tonally in the vein of ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE EXORCIST. The ten-episode first season (Netflix has already ordered a ten-episode second season) hits the streaming giant on October 26th.