Steven Yeun to voice animated 'Chew' adaptation

Animated feature based on the popular comic book series



Boom. Some hella cool news for ya fanboys... We've been following the rocky attempts to adapt the popular comic book Chew for television, but it looks like the project is going in a different direction -- an animated feature. And it will star the voices of The Walking Dead's Steven Yeun and The Guild's Felicia Day.

'Walking Dead' Actor Steven Yeun, Felicia Day Voicing Comic Adaptation 'Chew' (Exclusive)

Chew follows the adventures of Tony Chu, a "cibopath" detective who gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats. Which means if he's investigating a murder, a bite of the victim's corpse -- yes, ew -- will do the fast detective work of figuring out how he died and who killed him. The award-winning series, co-created by John Layman and Rob Guillory, and published by Image Comics, is craazy weird fun.

Steven Yeun will provide the voice of Detective Tony Chu, while Felicia Day will voice his love interest, food critic Amelia Mintz. Pretty darn perfect casting, I think.

Did the Chew TV series get scrapped because of racebending?

Fans of the comic book series Chew were bummed to hear that long-awaited plans for a TV series adaptation had been scrapped at Showtime. Now there are rumors circulating that it never got off the ground because the network wanted Kiefer Sutherland to play the lead Asian American lead character Tony Chu: Did Racebending With Kiefer Sutherland Stop The Chew TV Series At Showtime?

At a recent comics retailer summit, Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson told a crowd that the Chew TV series didn't happen because Showtime wanted Kiefer Sutherland, who, you know, is not Asian, to play the lead. But series creator John Layman said no way to that. Maybe this is true, but the Layman is telling it, Stephenson might have been joking. Still, the speculation gives you an unpleasant glimpse of how things could have gone awry:

The Chew TV series is not happening any time soon

This news is a couple of months old, but I completely missed it when it dropped... Fans of comic book series Chew will be disappointed to hear that plans for a live-action Showtime series have fallen through. It's not happening: Showtime's Proposed "Chew" Television Adaptation Is Officially Dead.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Chew follows the exploits of Tony Chu, a detective for the FDA, who has the bizarre ability to get a psychic impression from anything that he eats. Yes, that means taking a bite out of a dead body to solve a murder. It's a fun book that centers of an Asian American protagonist, which we like. It would have been pretty cool to see the live action version on Showtime series.

However, Chew writer/co-creator John Lyman broke this bad news back in February via Twitter: