Riverdale, N.Y., is going Hollywood.
And so are all the Archie Comics characters who have lived there in an eerie time warp since 1939 — high school students forever.
Fox has picked up a script deal for a one-hour drama called “Riverdale,” a live action series that’s based on the cast of the Archie comics.
No details yet on casting or when it might go on the air.
But this won’t be your grandfater’s Riverdale High School.
The show, written by former “Glee” scribe Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and produced by Greg Berlanti (the geek behind “The Flash” and “Arrow”), is being billed as a “bold, subversive take” on the love triangle among all-American boy Archie Andrews, the girl-next-door Betty and her spoiled socialite rival Veronica.
Could the self-absorbed but basically decent Veronica finally cross the line and become a mean girl?
The show will also feature Archie’s rich-boy frenemy Reggie Mantle and Archie’s best pal Jughead Jones, who personified the term “dude” back when the rest of America thought it only applied to rookies on a ranch.
And it will include Kevin Keller, a popular gay character who was a latecomer to Riverdale High.
So expect the hijinks at Riverdale High to skew older and darker than the milkshake-and-malts drama that has driven the family-friendly comics for 75 years.
“This is something we’ve been working on for a while now, figuring out the best way to bring these characters to life for what will be, essentially, the first time,” Aguirre-Sacasa said in a statement.
The last time Archie tried for a TV gig was in 1990, when the television movie “Archie: To Riverdale and Back” was broadcast as a potential pilot for a series.
No one liked it very much and the series idea was dropped.
Archie did have a successful 10-year run on radio, 1943-1953, and the phantom “band” The Archies had several huge hits and a life of their own in the 1960s.
