Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has put a very different spin on the beloved Archie comics characters for The CW's Riverdale. What was once a group of teens as wholesome as wholesome could get (with the obvious exception of that love triangle), Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead and the rest of the gang now deal with drugs, murder and a lot of the darker sides to life. Now, Aguirre-Sacasa is expanding his hold over all that's young, sexy and creepy on TV with two new projects. He's currently working on The Shelley Society and The Brides, and each show will be firmly planted in the world of gothic horror.
Let's start with The Shelley Society, which is set up, right now, at the upcoming streaming service HBO Max. The streamer just ordered a pilot plus an additional script for the gothic horror / teen romance drama which will feature young writer Mary Shelley leading a band of so-called "Romantic outlaws" (including her lovers Lord Byron and eventual husband Percy Shelley) against a host of supernatural baddies. This means the old-timey team will even have to face her own creation, Frankenstein's monster.
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa co-created The Shelley Society with Riverdale writers Tessa Leigh Williams and James DeWille, who are also on board the series as writers and executive producers along with Aguirre-Sacasa. The Shelley Society, which is being billed as a Victorian X-Files, will see Aguirre-Sacasa act as showrunner for the series.
While The Shelley Society would seem like enough spooky work for Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to take on, especially considering that he's also behind Netflix's The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and the upcoming Katy Keene for The CW, I suppose we can never count a man down who's hell bent on bringing scares to the small screen. Aguirre-Sacasa is also shopping around the idea for The Brides to premium cable and streaming services.
The Brides will be a modern retelling of the story of the brides of Dracula, the three powerful and beautiful vampire sisters who lived with Dracula in the Bram Stoker classic. Aguirre-Sacasa has re-imagined the tale as a sexy family saga with diverse leads, and will focus on what these immortal women do to maintain the power and legacy of their, very non-traditional, undead family.
According to Deadline, this horror series will see Aguirre-Sacasa, who created The Brides, collaborate with Greg Berlanti’s Berlanti Prods. again, as he has on each of his previous shows for The CW and Netflix. Sarah Schechter will executive produce, along with Aguirre-Sacasa and Berlanti. The Brides had a previous life in development at NBC for the 2015-2016 television season, but now that the idea is to shop it to premium channels and streaming outlets, you can expect the show to be a lot scarier and sexier than what one of the Big 4 would have allowed in primetime.
For those of you who are unaware, Robert Aguirre-Sacasa has quite a love of horror, and wrote Archie Comics best selling scare-fest series Afterlife With Archie and Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina. He also wrote / co-wrote the big screen remakes of Carrie and The Town That Dreaded Sundown, so he has a pretty good idea of how to make us want to leave all the lights on in our homes for days on end. That, of course, means that The Shelley Society and The Brides each have solid shots at becoming the next big thing in horror television.
There's no word right now when we might see The Shelley Society or The Brides on TV, as each are still in the early planning stages, but stay tuned to CinemaBlend for the latest. For everything you can catch on the small screen in the meantime, check out our 2019 fall TV premiere guide!
