Per The Hollywood Reporter, the long-gestating film version of Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko‘s Torso is heading to Netflix, with Weapons director Zach Cregger attached as producer. Also involved in the project are producers Roy Lee (Weapons, Barbarian), Alex Hedlund (Chucky), and Nick Antosca (The Act). Bendis and Andreyko will serve as executive producers.
Originally published by Image in 1999, Torso tells the true story of the Cleveland Torso Murderer, a serial killer who was hunted by Eliot Ness from 1935 to 1938, shortly after the investigator had brought down Al Capone. The book was an early hit for the creators (Bendis hadn’t even written for Marvel at the time), winning the Eisner Award for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition. It was reprinted in 2022 by Dark Horse, whom Netflix has a first-look deal with for media adaptations.
Previous attempts to adapt Torso began in 2006 with David Fincher, who went on to direct the thematically similar Zodiac instead. David Lowery (The Green Knight), Paul Greengrass (the Bourne series), and Corin Hardy (The Nun) became subsequently attached, respectively in 2013, 2017, and 2022. Cregger is no stranger to comics, having played Hal Jordan in Max Landis‘s parody The Death and Return of Superman, and written a Batman spin-off film called Henchmen. However, his current priority as a director is for a new Resident Evil film, due out September 18, 2026.
Other Bendis comics in the works for streaming include a slate of shows at Prime Video, based on Jinx, Murder Inc., and Pearl, with Ayelet Waldman & Michael Chabon, Tze Chun, and Chris Collins respectively attached as showrunners. Whether they or Torso emerge out of the gate first, they’ll still mark only the second adaptations of Bendis’s creator-owned comics to be realized as media, following the shortlived PlayStation Network series of Powers. In the meantime, Bendis is heading back to Marvel for a new run of stories, beginning with a back-up in next month’s Avengers #800.
