Netflix partners with ‘Sweet Tooth’ creator on adaptation of ‘God Country’

Netflix and Sweet Tooth showrunner Jim Mickle will join forces on a new show based on the comic God Country. Mickle will direct the fantasy genre movie, and he’s writing the script with Donny Cates, who wrote the comic.

God Country follows the exploits of an old widower named Emmet Quinlan, prone to violent outbursts and suffering from dementia. Quinlan finds an enchanted sword after a tornado obliterates his town in Texas, and it gives him powers, but he also has to use it against a slew of mythical creatures looking to use it for their own gain.

The feature comes from Legendary and AfterShock Media and will be the second collaboration between Netflix and Legendary after 2020’s Enola Holmes starring Millie Bobby Brown.

Cates, who’s worked with Marvel on a slew of Venom comics, wrote all six issues of God Country, with Geoff Shaw handling the artwork, initially published in 2017 and printed numerous times before being collected in paperback.

Mickle’s Sweet Tooth was a surprise hit for Netflix and recently renewed for a second season. Mickle recently also directed In The Shadow of the Moon, a thriller on the streaming giant starring Michael C. Hall and Boyd Holbrook.

Mickle said he was always a comic book fan in a recent interview, but the big blockbuster stories never really interested him.

“I never quite understood the big comic books. I always gravitated towards Image, in the ’90s. It was independent comics and those offbeat voices that really resonated, or felt a little bit more personal—that was always something that inspired me. I would go through cycles where I wouldn’t really read comics for a couple of years. Then I’d find myself at a comic book store, I’d fall back in love, and I’d pick up everything that had come out in the years prior.”

Sweet Tooth is about a global extinction event and aired during a global pandemic but succeeded because it was so honest and empathetic. It was the most-watched series on the network when it was released and stayed in the top ten for weeks afterward.

According to Cates, God Country is also about a cataclysmic event, and the title itself is a reference to a real thing.

“The phrase is often used in regards to religious areas or in relation to the Bible Belt. I like to think of our title in the same way that someone would talk about an area prone to wolf attacks—”be careful out there, that’s Wolf Country.” In that way, the title is more of a threat than anything else. The “god” in question isn’t necessarily one you’ve ever heard of, and it’s damn sure not one you’d want to cross. The title also conjures images of high plains and simple country folks just trying to get by. And our story, above all else, is of a small family dealing with forces beyond their control. Acts of god, if you will….”

God Country does not have a release date yet.