Since late last year, we’ve been hearing rumors about Chew possibly being adapted for television. Deadline is reporting today that Showtime has purchased the script for the adaptation of John Layman and Rob Guillory’s Eisner-award winning comic book series.
In Image's Chew, Detective Tony Chu is a cibopath who is able to detect psychic readings from anything he eats. If he bites an apple, he can see the orchard from where it was picked, taste the pesticide used to keep worms away from its core, and a number of other disturbing images from the life of said apple. In a world ravaged by bird flu, Chu follows cases involving the sale and transport of illegal chicken, a black market delicacy in this world. And if this sounds preposterous, it only becomes more so as the story unfolds. And it works, and works, and keeps working.
The book is being produced by Circle of Confusion, who is also responsible for adapting AMC’s mega-hit The Walking Dead as well as FX’s upcoming Powers series. It looks as though guys at Circle of Confusion know their stuff. Rather than look for properties that are simply commercially popular, they seem to be acquiring the rights to some of the most critically beloved books of the last decade.
It will be interesting to see how closely Showtime’s series will stay to the comic book, which is almost a third of the way through the planned sixty-issue run. The Walking Dead stayed reasonably close to the source material, focusing more on the book’s plight and tone than slavishly recreating the stories. Chew is telling a more specific and finite story, however, so I would expect less divergences from the plot.
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