Disney sets a release date for Afterlife with Archie series

Archie and all the other residents of Riverdale are coming soon to Disney Plus like you’ve never seen them before. The streaming service announced today that its in-development series Afterlife with Archie has been greenlit for a Halloween 2027 premiere.

Warner Bros. Television, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, and Greg Berlanti will serve as executive producers on the TV show. The same team previously brought the Archie comics to the small screen in Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The new series will adapt the 2013 comic of the same name, created by Aguirre-Sacasa and artist Francesco Francavilla. Afterlife with Archie follows the familiar Riverdale cast as they attempt to survive a zombie apocalypse triggered by a spell-gone-wrong, cast by Sabrina.

While the comic leaned heavily into horror, it also retained the franchise’s focus on teenage interpersonal conflict and romance. “This was the comic book that started it all,” said Aguirre-Sacasa in an official press release, “Getting to turn Afterlife into a TV series… is truly a full-circle moment — and the ultimate dream project for me. Time to say a prayer for Archie, Betty, Veronica and the whole gang, ‘cause THE ZOMBIES ARE COMING!!!!”

Archie’s live-action adaptation, Riverdale, saw plenty of success and ran for seven seasons between 2017 and 2023. While the show began as a fairly down-to-earth, if melodramatic, reinvention of the classic comic characters, storylines became progressively stranger over the years. Witchcraft fully entered the show in season 6 when it crossed over with Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (itself based on another horror-focused Aguirre-Sacasa comic).

The original Afterlife with Archie comic only ran 10 issues. However, when it was first announced last year that Disney Plus had ordered a series, Aguirre-Sacasa revealed he had returned to work on the comic as well. While he said issues eleven and twelve had been written, no new issues of the series have been released yet. No casting has been announced for the Afterlife with Archie series, but Riverdale fans are sure to hope for the return of that show’s stars.