Extra, Extra – Bat Boy Found on Netflix! Bat Boy, the front-page staple of the now-defunct tabloid newspaper The Weekly World News, is coming to the streamer. Deadline reports that Riverdale‘s Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa will spearhead a new TV series starring the haf-man, half-bat creature.

The series will center around Bobby Bates, the titular Bat Boy, who is found living in the dilapidated ruins of a Florida carnival. Florida has a long and storied connection with carnivals; people in the carnival industry traditionally stayed there in the winter, and one town, Gibsonton, was famous for having a high population of sideshow performers. Bat Boy, however, will re-enter society with the help of his friends Charisma and Olive, and enroll in the local high school. There, he’ll try and make friends with his peers, solve a mystery…and slake his unending thirst for human blood. Aguirre-Sacasa will executive produce the horror comedy series with One Piece‘s Joe Tracz.

Who Is Bat Boy?

The Weekly World News was a tabloid newspaper that was published from 1979 to 2007, and currently survives as an online publication. Unlike fellow tabloids that peddled gossip — some real, some manufactured — about the rich and the famous, the Weekly World News focused on the strange, the paranormal, and the supernatural. Most famous of their cover stories was Bat Boy. Created by editor Dick Kulpa and writer Bob Lind, Bat Boy’s pointy-eared, fang-mouthed face first graced the paper’s front page in 1992, accompanied by the headline “Bat Child Found in Cave!” It was one of the paper’s best-selling issues in its decades-long history, and the character became a mascot for the publication, appearing in a number of front page stories over the years. A comic strip starring the character, written and drawn by underground cartoonist Peter Bagge, ran in the paper for several years; he was also featured in his own stage production, Bat Boy: The Musical. The new Netflix series is not connected to that production, however.

Writer and playwright Aguirre-Sacasa first made his name with Archie’s Weird Fantasy, a stage play that depicted Riverdale’s Archie Andrews coming out of the closet; he was sued by Archie Comics, but later had the last laugh by writing for the publisher, and creating Riverdale, which reinterpreted their most famous characters. He has also written for Looking, Glee, and Supergirl, and currently writes and produces Max‘s Pretty Little Liars reboot.

Bat Boy is in development at Netflix; no casting or release date has yet been announced.

via Collider