We were on the fence about the Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but if you wanted to win us over Netflix, you did it with a quickness with this casting.
Kiernan Shipka is heading to Netflix and will play the character that we fell hard for thanks to Melissa Joan Hart (look don’t judge us, we know we should read the comics). The Mad Men actress has been cast as our favorite witch. The character of Sabrina is described as, “an empowered young woman, half-human, half-witch, [who] is just beginning her dark education as a sorceress, even as she tries to maintain a normal life as a sophomore at Baxter High. Intelligent, compassionate and brave to the point of recklessness, Sabrina is all that stands between us and the forces of darkness that threaten our world.”
It won’t be the Sabrina that we remember from the Melissa Joan Hart rendition. This will be much darker. The new series, “reimagines the origin and adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch as a dark coming-of-age story that traffics in horror, the occult and, of course, witchcraft. … This adaptation finds Sabrina wrestling to reconcile her dual nature — half-witch, half-mortal — while standing against the evil forces that threaten her, her family and the daylight world humans inhabit.”
But that’s what we’re looking forward to. Seeing a tale that we think we know, but told so differently. The series, which was originally developed for The CW was given a two-season order (each with 10 hour-long episodes) by Netflix, after The CW passed it up.
“We’re all such huge fans of Kiernan’s work that when we started talking about who this new incarnation of Sabrina could be, her name was on everyone’s wish list,” Aguirre-Sacasa, who wrote and created the show said. “This is a darker, more macabre version of Sabrina, and we’re incredibly excited for people to see Kiernan make this iconic character her own.”
Are you excited for Sabrina the Teenage Witch?