Zach Cregger Is Bringing a Classic Indie Horror Comic to the Screen

With his solo debut Barbarian, Zach Cregger revealed the secrets lurking underneath Michigan homes. For his next film, Cregger will be exploring the dark side of the mitten state’s rival Ohio. Cregger is set to produce Torso, an adaptation of the 1998 indie comic by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cregger will co-produce with Roy Lee from Vertigo Entertainment, along with Alex Hedlund and Nick Antosca. The latter two may give us an idea of what the finished product will be, as the duo’s production company Eat the Cat also made true crime series Candy and A Friend of the Family. Given that Cregger and co. will be making Torso for Netflix, it sounds like the adaptation will go for more of a lurid thriller tone, rather than match the grounded horror of the comic.

Which might not be a bad thing at all. As Bendis famously recounted in his 2000 miniseries Fortune and Glory, Hollywood has long had its eyes on Torso, as well as his previous hardboiled mystery comics Jinx and A.K.A. Goldfish. Despite getting attention from David Fincher and Paramount Pictures, the film never left Development Hell, leaving Bendis more than a little disillusioned. Bendis’ work did see live-action adaptation, both in the form of the many Marvel stories that have been reimagined for the screen (especially on Netflix’s Daredevil and Jessica Jones series) and his indie series Powers, which was turned into a series for the short-lived PlayStation Network in 2015. And yet, Torso has heretofore been unadapted.

It’s easy to see why the series would gain so much attention from Hollywood. Published by Image Comics between 1998 and 1999, Torso has an irresistible hook: the true story of Eliot Ness, after his showdown with Al Capone in Hollywood, investigating a series of grisly murders in 1930s Cleveland, Ohio. In each case, all that investigators find is a torso, free of limbs or head, making it difficult to even identify the body, much less find the killer, in the days before high-tech forensic science.

Moreover, Bendis and Andreyko make the book read like a movie. Bendis has become infamous for his quippy, chatty form of comic book dialogue, which replicates the banter found screwball comedies, for better or for worse. Moreover, the duo uses mixed media, integrating photographs and newsprint into Bendis’s moody illustrations, all emphasized by thick black inks. Even the way the story unfolds recalls a movie more than it does a comic, as in an early scene in which the words “pop pop” appear over panels of kids discovering a body and continue into panels of Ness giving a press conference, as if sound effects overlayed between two scenes in a film.

Despite all the misfires, this current group seems particularly well-suited to bringing Torso to screen. Not only is there an appetite for true crime stories about horrible things happening in mundane places, but Cregger is riding high after his triumphant 2025 film Weapons.

Can Cregger be the one to finally bring Torso together? Or will this outing end in failure, adding just one more dark turn to an already despairing tale?