VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Director Zoya Akhtar On Creating ‘The Archies’ Film & Finding Its Connections To India

In a new uInterivew, Indian director Zoya Akhtar spoke about her new film The Archies and how it is connected to Indian cinema. 

Akhtar created the movie after meeting the founder of Graphic India, Sharad Devarajan, to discuss a separate comic. 

“I just by the by mentioned that I was an Archie fan growing up, I grew up reading the Archie comics,” she told uInterview founder Erik Meers exclusively. “The next thing I know he told me it was leased to Netflix and, next thing I know, Netflix calls me and says would you be interested, and it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

She explained how the Archie comics were a vital part of her childhood in India and described it as her “portal to America.”

When creating the plotline of the film, Akhtar made sure that it reached the original audience and reached a newer one as well. 

“We wanted to take it back to where the feeling we had when we read it,” she observed. “So went back to nostalgia but the challenge was to make sure that the original Archie readers identify with it and at the same time, thematically, it resonates with the generation today that may not know the comic or may only know it from Riverdale.”

Akhtar shared how the dance scenes in the movie are connected to India and Bollywood. 

“I come from the Indian film industry and it’s our syntax, it’s the grammar of our cinema to use music, and it’s been part of the storytelling of that nation and you know it started orally we use music in that it came into our theater and then it came into our cinema and we love it.”

The film is made for multiple audiences and can reach all of them due to the different viewer’s similarities. 

“I mean different cultures go to the cinema for different reasons, but I think here entertainment is the biggest reason in both these industries. So those things are similar, of course, there’s a language, there’s the level of drama, those kinds of things are different,” she explained. “But I mean you’re making a film, you’re making human stories and human beings are the same everywhere. The frequency may be different but it’s the same notes you’re playing.”

Akhtar also shared her favorite scene, although she mentioned that it is very difficult for her to choose just one. 

“I love the scene of father and son in the travel agency,” she said. “I love that scene. I love him where he says that he didn’t migrate and why he didn’t migrate. I like that scene.”

The Archies is currently available for streaming on Netflix.