"Archie Comics Hollywood Variety Article"
Article about Archie Comics briefly mentioning Sabrina The Teenage Witch, 15th April 1997
By Ray Richmond
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica, the clean-cut comic book characters created more than 50 years ago, are on the brink of a multimedia resurgence.
A live-action Archie feature film is in the works at Universal Pictures (with approval on a final shooting script expected next month), while a Broadway musical from producers Barry and Fran Weissler is also planned.
The music (on the musical) is all set; we're just waiting on finishing up the script,'' said Michael Silberkleit, chairman and co-publisher of Archie Comics.
We hope to have a workshop on it this summer and to see the play on Broadway by next year. I'd also like to see the movie completed by '98.''
There is even talk of a new version of the Archies singing group, more than a quarter-century after ``Sugar Sugar,'' the teeny-bop smash single, sold more than 6 million copies for the studio-bound band.
The character are also returning to the small screen. The animated half-hour series The Archie Mysteries -- the first Archie cartoon since The New Archies ran Saturday mornings on NBC -- is in development awaiting a cable or network deal.
The show is being produced by DIC Entertainment, which Monday reached agreement with Archie Comics to acquire the animation production and worldwide licensing rights to the company's characters.
The show is going to show all of the classic Archie characters in their regular personas, except for the mystery element,'' said DIC president Andy Heyward.
It won't be Archie in space or the Archie Babies. It'll be Archie and Reggie and Jughead and Betty and Veronica and Moose and the others. They are a timeless group, and that's why they are still around after all this time.''
He added the TV show would definitely not be offered for syndication.
Archie Comics has been around since 1941, when John Goldwater created the characters and Bob Montana came up with their likenesses. Goldwater's son Richard is today the company's president and co-publisher.
During the intervening 56 years, the Archie franchise has produced 25 comic book titles and numerous globally distributed newspaper strips. There have also been a handful of TV shows, the first being The Archies from Filmation in 1969.
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch was also born as an Archie Comics character before going on to fame in cartoons and, currently, on ABC's primetime schedule.
But while interest in the redheaded, freckle-faced, perpetually chaste teen Archie and his all-American circle of fellow innocents might at first glance appear to have waned during the 1980s and '90s, Heyward and Silberkleit insist that simply isn't so.
We still sell more than 1.1 million comic books in North America every single month,'' Silberkleit said.
I just found out last week that someone recently bought mint-condition copies of the first two comics where Archie first appeared (in Pep Comics 22 and Archie Comics 1). They paid $100,000. Does that sound like something that has dropped in interest?''
There has, in fact, been a rekindling of Archie comic book interest of late from parents, Silberkleit said.
They remember how fun it was to read the comics, and want their kids to have the same experience they did,'' he said. ''They also like the fact that the books encourage reading, and have no sex or violence. It's clean, wholesome fun.''
In Archie's world of Riverdale, time appears to have frozen around 1953. Heyward explained that, innocence aside, the most powerful factor driving the Archie franchise is its appeal to young girls at a time when boy toys, action figures and superheroes dominate the comic and animation categories.
Sabrina has proven that there is an audience out there for girl-appeal books and merchandising, and the Archie characters are tailor-made for that,'' Heyward said.
He added that deals have been struck with some three-dozen licensees to begin manufacturing Archie-themed figures, musical items, books and apparel.
But if the new generation of American kids and nostalgic adults fails to embrace Archie as anticipated, there is one country where the characters' popularity remains unparalleled: India.
India?
Yeah, Archie is just huge over there,'' Heyward said. ''It's the primary image that Indians have of Americans.''
Talk about an Archie mystery.
Reuters/Variety
08:05 04-15-97
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