Archie characters get re-animated

Publisher Archie Comics has partnered with a US animation studio to coproduce a 2D toon featuring characters from the original Archie comics as tweens.

It’s Archie (52×11′) will be coproduced alongside Moonscoop in the US and will see characters from the comics, previously only seen as teenagers, as 12-year-olds studying at Riverdale Jr High.

The toon will blend slapstick comedy with outlandish, off-the-wall novel adventures, its producers said.

“These wonderful kids of It’s Archie are a bit younger than we’ve ever seen them before, but possessed with the same basic personalities that have endeared them since their introduction in the Archies Comics over 70 years ago,” said Moonscoop CEO Mike Young.

Archie Comics have been published since 1941 and have sold over two billion copies worldwide, while over 11 million digital Archie Comics and books have been sold.

The Archie Show was an animated series that aired for one season on CBS in the US in 1968, while Archie’s Weird Mysteries, produced by DIC Entertainment, aired on US television on what is now known as Ion Television between 1999 and 2000.

Sabrina the Teenage Witch is one character from the Archie Comics to have already received a reboot this year.

Discovery/Hasbro joint-venture kids’ and family channel The Hub has begun airing Sabrina: Secrets of a Teenage Witch, an animated revamp of the franchise coproduced by Moonscoop in the US with Irish and Indian partners.

Moonscoop’s US studio is a subsidiary of Moonscoop in France, which went into administration this month. Only the holding company is in administration and its US arm has not been affected.