Cannibal cop comic Chew gets a cable series from Predator 2 director

UPDATE: It was around the time of last summer’s Comic Con when a CHEW series was initially announced, and Deadline now says the quirky comic will come to life on Showtime, ensuring the material won’t need to be tamed down for TV. Meanwhile, you should catch up with the trade paperbacks.

July 21, 2010: “Cannibal cop” is actually something of an oversimplification — in the Image Comic CHEW, detective Tony Chu is a cibopath, which means he can get psychic impressions from whatever he eats (except beets). This strange skill comes in handy for solving murders, but it obviously involves noshing on a victim.

The book from John Layman and Rob Guillory is fun and weird and unique, and someone in Hollywood thought so, too. The series has been grabbed for a TV show by Circle of Confusion, who also shuffled Robert Kirkman’s zombie comic “The Walking Dead” onto AMC.

The series will be exec produced and directed by Stephen Hopkins, who made movies like PREDATOR 2, JUDGMENT NIGHT and LOST IN SPACE before heading to the tube to work on shows like “24” and “Californication”.

Circle of Confusion also has Brian Michael Bendis’ superhero cop comic “Powers” in the works as an FX series.