Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa parlayed his childhood interest in theater, comic books and horror into a successful career as an award-winning playwright, successful comic book author and film and television writer for "Carrie" (2013) and the 2015 NBC pilot "Brides." Born in 1973 in Washington, D.C., Aguirre-Sacasa was the son of a Nicaraguan diplomat and spent much of his childhood in both Central America and the United States. He developed an interest in theater while in high school, and studied drama at Georgetown University before moving into work as a publicist with the Shakespeare Theatre and writing arts and political coverage for the Washington Post, among other newspapers. A week-long workshop with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel spurred him to earn graduate degrees from both McGill University and the Yale School of Drama while also focusing his career on the theater. Aguirre-Sacasa began penning offbeat dramas based on his interest in horror films and comic books, including a romantic comedy "Say You Love Satan" (2001), based on the "Omen" film series, and "Archie's Weird Fantasy" (2003), which detailed comic book hero Archie Andrews revealing that he was gay. The production earned a cease and desist order from Archie Comics, but also led to work for Marvel Comics on their long-running "Fantastic Four" series and other titles. During this period, Aguirre-Sacasa also continued to write plays, including an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray," while also penning scripts for "Big Love" (HBO, 2006-2011) and "Glee" (Fox, 2009-2015). His fascination with Archie came full circle in 2014 when Archie Comics tapped him to write "Afterlife with Archie" (2013), which envisioned the citizens of Riverdale under siege by the living dead; the success of the book led to his promotion to Chief Creative Officer for the comic imprint. That same year, Aguirre-Sacasa also provided revisions to the book for the troubled Broadway musical "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" and also wrote the script for Kimberley Peirce's remake of "Carrie," with Chloe Grace Moretz as Stephen King's maligned heroine. A modest hit with viewers, he followed it with "The Town that Dreaded Sundown" (2014), a meta-remake based on both a series of unsolved murders in Depression-era Texas and a '70s-era horror film inspired by the events. The following year, Aguirre-Sacasa was tapped to write and executive produce the NBC pilot "Brides," which envisioned Count Dracula's trio of female vampires in modern day New York, while also penning the script for an "Archie" TV pilot on the CW and saw his book for a musical based on "American Psycho" enter previews before its debut on Broadway.