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

Walking Dead star Steven Yeun and Felicia Day, the creator of web series The Guild, are voice-starring in Chew, the animated feature adaptation of the popular comic from Image Comics.

Jeff Krelitz, who helmed the animated Torchwood: Web of Lies and Peter Panzerfaust, is directing the project, which has a script by Chew co-creator John Layman.

Krelitz is producing with David Boxenbaum via Heavy Metal, the duo’s multimedia company. It will be the company’s first animated project.

Chew centers on a detective who is a “cibopath,” a person who gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats, and is set in a world where bird meats are illegal after bird flu killed millions of Americans.

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The book’s trade paperback collections have hit the New York Times‘ best-seller charts, and the comic has won two Eisner Awards, one for best new series and one for best continuing series, as well as two Harvey Awards.

Yeun is voicing the detective, Tony Chu. Day is voicing his love interest, a food critic named Amelia Mintz who is a “saboscrivner,” someone who can write about food so precisely the reader actually feels like they are tasting it.

Chew is being executive produced by Scott Boxenbaum, Layman, and Chew’s other co-creator, Rob Guillory. It’s being co-executive produced by former BBC executive Dan Tischler.

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The producers are aiming for a digital broadcast and home entertainment release.

Yeun is a longtime reader and fan of the series, and was considered by the filmmakers to be a no-brainer to play the Asian-American Chu. He is repped by WME on the voice front, Paradigm for live-action, Gotham/Principal and Hansen Jacobson, and will next be seen in Fox Searchlight’s sci-fi movie I Origins, which opens July 18.

Day has been a fan of the book since 2010, when she called it “sublime” and “original” in a tweet.  The actress-comedian, repped by WME and Lichter Grossman, has also appeared on shows such as Supernatural and Eureka.

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