Zoya Akhtar On Recreating Riverdale In 1960s India In Netflix Original Film ‘The Archies’

deadline.com:

When Zoya Akhtar was approached some years ago by Graphic India to see if she was interested in adapting American comic The Phantom, her first question was whether the Archies comics were available for adaptation.

Like many Indians of her generation, she had been an avid reader of the comics as a child: “I remember cycling to the library to get the double digest, then would come back home and nobody could get a word out of me, I was just reading that comic,” Akhtar tells Deadline.

She says the appeal of the comics is that they were a portal into the West at a time when India was still not totally liberalized and there was no cable and satellite TV to provide a window into the wider world. “It showed us everything about Western culture – how people dressed, what they were listening to, what food they were eating, so we all wanted burgers and milkshakes.

But it was also wholesome and family-oriented, so nobody had a problem with children in India reading it.”  When Graphic India called Akhtar, they’d already sold the Indian adaptation rights for the Archies comics to Netflix, who in turn asked her if she wanted to produce a film version.