Sony Pictures Animation announced that it’s optioned Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose’s horror anthology comic Hungry Ghosts for an animated series. The reveal was made at Annecy and comes on the heels of the studio’s smash-hit, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. Along with Hungry Ghosts, the studio also optioned Wish Dragon, The Boondocks, and Superbago.
Hungry Ghosts released in January of 2018 from Dark Horse’s Berger Books imprint. Writers Joel Rose and Anthony Bourdain worked with a wide range of artists including Vanesa R. Del Ray, Alberto Ponticelli, Mateus Santolouco, Francesco Francavilla and several others. The series brought a group of international chefs together to play a game of 100 candles; a samurai tradition that basically amounts to sharing horrifying stories of demons and ghosts. The four issue collection finished publication just a month before Bourdain passed on June 8, 2018. Aside from hosting CNN’s Parts Unknown, he wrote Kitchen Confidential and the culinary action comic Get Jiro.
For now, Sony is remaining quiet on details as to the Hungry Ghosts animated series. It was described as “an anthology of frightening, hilarious, twisted, and culinary-inspired ghost stories.” Coming from the place that made Into the Spiderverse, Bourdain’s work is in good hands.
