The CW’s Riverdale spinoff has begun to populate its world.
Ashleigh Murray, who plays aspiring singer-songwriter Josie McCoy on Riverdale, will continue playing the character in the spinoff pilot Katy Keene. The show follows four Archie Comics characters, including Josie and the title character, future fashion icon Katy Keene, as they pursue their twenty-something dreams in New York City.
The musical dramedy will chronicle the origins and struggles of the four aspiring artists who are trying to make it on Broadway, on the runway and in the recording studio. Should the project — which won’t air as a planted spinoff on Riverdale — get picked up, Murray would depart Riverdale.
Katy Keene jumps ahead several years from the current Riverdale timeline, so crossovers are not planned. “If anyone from Riverdale were to come to Katy, they’d come as their older self,” The CW chief Mark Pedowitz told reporters last week at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour.
Aguirre-Sacasa and Riverdale veteran Michael Grassi are writing the pilot and executive producing with Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Archie CEO Jon Goldwater; Maggie Kiley is set to direct.
The show comes from Warner Bros. TV, where Berlanti has a big overall deal. It is the second CW pilot, along with Batwoman, that the prolific producer has at The CW this season.
Katy Keene is one of six pilots The CW has ordered thus far, all but one of them (Glamorous, a drama about a gender non-conforming person who lands a job at a cosmetics firm) based on previously existing IP. They include one other spinoff — Jane the Novela, dramatizing the novels written by Jane the Virgin‘s title character — along with DC-based Batwoman and new takes on The Lost Boys and the Nancy Drew mystery novels.
