'Tomie' TV Series Based On The Horror Manga Series Headed To Quibi

Quibi still exists, and it just announced a potentially exciting new project. The streaming service devoted to short-form entertainment is developing a show based on the Japanese horror manga Tomie. Crawl and High Tension filmmaker Alexandre Aja is set to direct, while Chilling Adventures of Sabrina cast member Adeline Rudolph is set to star. In the series, a girl goes missing, her body later found dismembered. That's creepy enough, but to make things extra unsettling, the dead girl later turns up at school alive and well, and acting as if nothing happened.

At this point, most people seem to think Quibi is nothing more than a punchline. But it's still kicking around! And while the short-form streaming service has yet to make much of an impact – a recent report says the service lost 92% of its users after the free trial period expired – there are still new Quibi shows being added to production. One such new show is Tomie, based on the horror manga of the same name written and illustrated by Junji Ito.

The show is being described as "the story of a beautiful high school girl (Adeline Rudolph) who goes missing and pieces of her body are discovered scattered around a small town. But what starts out as a murder mystery turns into something even more horrific." You may be wondering: if Adeline Rudolph is the star of the show, why then is she immediately killed-off and cut up into little pieces? Well, there's more to this than meets the eye. Here's a bit more detail via the Tomie wiki: "Tomie Kawakami was murdered on her way back from a school trip. Her body was found in dozens of pieces and the killer hasn't been caught. However, Tomie returns to school as if nothing happened."

The manga ran from 1987 through 2000, comprising three volumes. And the Quibi adaptation won't be the first attempt at bringing Tomie to the screen. There's an entire Tomie Japanese film series, with nine films so far. There was also an anthology television series released in 1999. The Quibi adaptation has lined-up some impressive names behind-the-scenes: Alexandre Aja, director of High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes remake, and the recent Crawl, is directing, while Aquaman writer David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick is tackling the script.

I'm unfamiliar with the manga, but I dig this premise, and I've enjoyed most of Aja's work, especially Crawl. Could this end up being the rare Quibi title that's a must-see? Stranger things have happened.