You can’t keep a good Torso down.
After spending more than two decades ricocheting around Hollywood, the graphic-novel adaptation is back in play—this time at Netflix.
Netflix has picked up the film rights to Torso, the true-crime graphic novel from Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko, and the streamer is now in early development on a feature adaptation centered on Eliot Ness. The deal follows what trade reports describe as a brief but heated bidding war, with the price for rights said to be in the seven figures.
No writer or director is attached yet, but the producing lineup is already crowded with notable names.
A stacked producing team
Roy Lee’s Vertigo Entertainment is producing and has partnered again with filmmaker Zach Cregger, who will produce via his Subconscious banner (but is not directing). Alex Hedlund and Nick Antosca are also producing through Eat the Cat, the team behind true-life projects including Candy and A Friend of the Family. Bendis and Andreyko will serve as executive producers.
What Torso is about
Originally published by Image Comics as a six-issue limited series, Torso follows Ness after his well-known takedown of Al Capone. After relocating to Cleveland, Ness is pulled into a gruesome serial-killer investigation involving dismembered bodies left in the area—and taunting messages sent to police.
The book’s pitch—often described as “The Untouchables meets Zodiac”—made it catnip for filmmakers early on, and the project’s long development history reads like a tour through modern thriller directors.
A long road through Hollywood
Trade reporting has previously tied Torso to David Fincher at Paramount in the mid-2000s (reported in 2006), with Matt Damon said to be attached at one point and a script credited to Ehren Kruger. That version ultimately didn’t move forward after the option lapsed—an outcome trade accounts have attributed to budget concerns and other creative considerations.
The project resurfaced in 2013 with David Lowery attached to write and direct, backed by Circle of Confusion.
In 2017, it took another turn with Paul Greengrass reportedly set to direct a Brian Helgeland script under the title Ness.
And in 2022, Bendis said Corin Hardy was developing a new take.
Now Netflix has the rights, and the property is once again positioned as a prestige, fact-based thriller—just with a new studio home and a producer roster built for genre.
What the producers are up to next
The new deal was reportedly signed in late November. Vertigo’s recent slate spans multiple lanes of genre filmmaking, while Eat the Cat continues to juggle TV and film, including a limited-series take on Cape Fear (now in post-production, per reports) and Amazon MGM’s Verity, which is also in post.