CBR senior staff writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for over fifteen years now at CBR (primarily with his “Comics Should Be Good” series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed). He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House – Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia! and one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post, Vulture and Gizmodo. He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed and other pop culture features at Pop Culture References. Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you'd like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!
For the last two decades, there seemed to be a bit of a rush on film adaptations of comic books, but in recent years, the adaptations have begun to slow down a bit. However, in 2025, it appears as though we have hit a second wind, with Charles Burns' Black Hole being optioned (in a bidding war, no less), and now Netflix acquiring the rights to Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko's acclaimed graphic novel, Torso, ALSO following a bidding war.
Hot off of the success of Weapons, director Zach Cregger will be producing the film for Netflix under his Subconscious production company. Other producers on the project include Vertigo Entertainment's Roy Lee (who produced Weapons) and Eat the Cat's Alex Hedlund and Nick Antosca. Cregger will not be writing or directing the film. Bendis and Andreyko will be executive producing the film.
What is Torso?
Image via JinxworldTorso tells the story of a serial killer in Cleveland in the 1930s, right smack in the middle of the Great Depression, and so the Cleveland Torso Murderer (he got the name from the fact that he dismembered his victims) was able to take advantage of the shanty towns that were springing up throughout the country due to the economic hardships by picking up victims who fell out of society, and then depositing their dismembered body parts in other bad parts of Cleveland.
Bendis and Andreyko are both from Cleveland, so they heard the story passed down to them as local lore, but the added twist is that the person who was in charge of hunting down the Torso Murderer was none other than Elliot Ness, the former head of the "Untouchables," the group that brought down Al Capone in Chicago. Ness became the Cleveland Safety Director right in time to be tasked with taking down this serial killer.
The killer was never caught.
How was Torso's Hollywood journey part of comic book history?
Image via JinxworldTorso has been optioned a number of times over the years, with David Fincher planning to adapt it at one point, following his hit film, Zodiac, which was ALSO about a serial killer who was never caught.
Bendis actually wrote and drew a comic called Fortune and Glory that was about his attempts to sell film adaptations of his comic book,
A.K.A. Goldfish. While he was trying to sell that comic book as a film adaptation, Bendis developed the concept for Torso with Andreyko, with the idea that the comic book could also serve as a pitch for a film.
At the end of the comic, Bendis gets Torso optioned through the help of Todd McFarlane (who would have been a producer on the film). McFarlane then hired Bendis to do some writing in the Spawn Universe, and that was right before Bendis started working for Marvel, where he became a comic book writing superstar.
So now, decades later, Bendis' Hollywood adventures might finally come to fruition with an actual film adaptation of Torso. Either way, it appears that this option is a good deal more lucrative than the option was more than 25 years ago (the Hollywood Reporter notes that it was in the seven figures).
Source: Hollywood Reporter
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