Netflix is adapting Jeff Lemire’s comic book series Sweet Tooth from DC Comics’ imprint Vertigo into a live-action drama.
The streaming service on Tuesday handed out an eight-episode series order for the project, which hails from Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey’s Team Downey, Hap and Leonard co-creator Jim Mickle, Arrow showrunner Beth Schwartz, and Warner Bros. Television.
Described as family-friendly and broad in appeal, Sweet Tooth follows the storybook adventures of Gus — part deer, part boy — who leaves his home in the forest to find the outside world ravaged by a cataclysmic event. He joins a ragtag family of humans and animal-children hybrids like himself in search of answers about this new world and the mystery behind his hybrid origins.
Christian Convery (Beautiful Boy), Nonso Anozie (The Laundromat), Adeel Akhtar (Les Misérables) and Will Forte (The Last Man on Earth) will star in the series, with James Brolin attached to voice the narrator.
Mickle and Schwartz will serve as writers, executive producers and co-showrunners on the series, with Mickle also taking the director’s chair. Team Downey’s Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey and Amanda Burrell are also executive producing, with Linda Moran and Evan Moore producing.
Hulu had given a pilot order for Sweet Tooth back in 2018. But for some reason, the Disney-owned streamer did not move forward with the project. The Hulu pilot was written and directed by Mickle and was produced by Team Downey.
Written and drawn by Lemire, the Sweet Tooth comic book series was first published in 2009 and ran for 40 issues before concluding in 2013. It will soon join the growing list of Vertigo titles that have been adapted into live-action series, including AMC’s Preacher, Netflix’s Lucifer, and CW’s iZombie.