A TV series based on Jeff Lemire’s DC/Vertigo comic ‘Sweet Tooth’ has been in development since 2018, with ‘Hap and Leonard’ co-creator Jim Mickle set to write, direct, and serve as executive producer. He is also acting as co-showrunner with ‘Arrow’s Beth Schwartz. Also producing are Robert Downey Jr. and his wife, Susan Downey, via their Team Downey imprint, in association with Warner Bros. TV. In 2018, ‘Sweet Tooth’ was headed to Hulu, but it appears that things have changed and now Netflix will host.
‘Sweet Tooth’ tells the story of Gus, a human/deer hybrid, who lives in a rural post-apocalyptic world that has been decimated by a mysterious plague. (Ouch! A little TOO familiar at this point.) After the death of his very religious father, Gus finds himself on a journey, accompanied by rugged human survivor, Tommy Jepperd. Over the course of their travels, they discover a vast conspiracy involving other half-human, half-animal hybrids.
The comic book was published from 2009 until 2013, for a total of 40 issues. Unlike some other acclaimed Vertigo series, Lemire did not have an ending in mind when he started ‘Sweet Tooth’. The book was only set to run for 12 issues in the beginning, so Lemire found himself essentially making the series up as he went along.
Back in 2013, as the comic was wrapping up, Lemire discussed adapting ‘Sweet Tooth’ to another medium, and felt it would work better as a movie, as opposed to a TV series, but it seems he was open to the alternative after all. As Lemire told CBR at the time:
“Yes, I would love to see it adapted. I think maybe more as a movie than a TV show. I think it could be really boiled down to the original idea I had, which was that the first 10 or 11 issues of the series could almost be the whole movie or the whole series. Everything else could be cut out. I just don’t have the luxury of sitting around and thinking about that happening because it’s out of my control, really.”
Lemire also discussed the legal difficulty of adapting a Vertigo comic versus a book from another publisher, but it isn’t impossible to bring Vertigo projects to other media. ‘Swamp Thing’, ‘Constantine’ (based on the comic ‘Hellblazer’), ‘iZombie’, ‘Preacher’, and ‘Lucifer’ were all based on Vertigo books, as are the in-development ‘Sandman’ and ‘Y: The Last Man’.
Were you a fan of Jeff Lemire’s ‘Sweet Tooth’? Are you looking forward to it coming to Netflix?
Source: Comicbook.com
