EXCLUSIVE: As Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil prepares to cross $200M at the worldwide box office, the film’s producer Carter Swan has a new project to announce — a film adaptation of the Keenspot comic book series The Crying Boy by Niall O’Rourke & Rob Moran.
Published in 2024, The Crying Boy follows a grieving widow trying to rebuild her life in Queens after the violent death of her husband. Things take a turn for the worse when she must save her young son from an even more terrifying fate, when the haunting painting of a crying child that he eerily befriends proves to be the vessel for an ancient demon that has preyed on children for millennia.
Following a Ringo Award nomination for Best Single Issue or Short Story, The Crying Boy‘s first issue is currently in its third printing, with a deluxe collection of the series planned for 2027 via Keenspot’s book distribution deal with Simon & Schuster. Rona Mark is scripting the big-screen adaptation.
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The comic’s co-creator O’Rourke said, “Super excited to work with Carter Swan and develop the project. He brings an incredible amount of experience and knowledge to this. We hit it off straight away after he read the script and he was a big fan of the Keenspot comic book series.”
A senior producer at PlayStation Productions for nearly eight years — through end of 2025 — Swan worked on Cregger’s Resident Evil during his time there, as well as HBO’s The Last of Us, Uncharted, Gran Turismo, Twisted Metal and Until Dawn. As an executive producer on The Last of Us, he earned Emmy nominations in 2023 and ’25.
For a time the world’s largest publisher of webcomics, Keenspot was founded in 2000. The company first broke into film with the Universal rom-com Marry Me — a 2022 adaptation of one of its webcomics starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. The company’s first animated adaptation was Grubbs, based on the comics by Max Weaver, whose voice cast included Wil Wheaton, Jerry O’Connell, Jodie Sweetin and more.
Presently, Keenspot is also developing the animated adaptations Toy starring Kate Micucci and Kung Fu Legume starring Sherry Cola and Kheng Hua Tan, among other projects.
Chris Crosby, comic book publisher Keenspot’s CEO, said: “The Crying Boy has been one of Keenspot’s best-received titles and we’re ecstatic that a producer like Swan will be helping to bring it to the big screen. It’s a testament to the awesome creativity of writer Niall O’Rourke and artist Rob Moran that this adaptation is attracting talent of the highest caliber.”
