After playing Sheriff's Deputy Frank Hawkins in the recent HALLOWEEN sequel, Deadline reports that Will Patton will be turning to the dark side as Avery Sunderland in the upcoming Swamp Thing TV series which will debut on the DC Universe streaming service next year. Penned by Mark Verheiden and Gary Dauberman, Swamp Thing will follow Abby Arcane (Crystal Reed) as she "investigates what seems to be a deadly swamp-born virus in a small town in Louisiana but soon discovers that the swamp holds mystical and terrifying secrets. When unexplainable and chilling horrors emerge from the murky marsh, no one is safe."
Avery Sunderland is a prominent businessman who serves as the "de facto patriarch of his Louisiana hometown, always giving back to the community. His benevolent veneer, however, masks a ruthless determination to harness the power of the swamp for profit." Sounds like a good fit for Patton. Virginia Madsen is also set to play Avery's wife, Maria, who "traded in her privileged upbringing for the swamps of Marais when she married local business magnate Avery Sunderland, but Avery’s life-time obsession with the swamp has driven a wedge between him and Maria. Her poised existence is shaken further when the return of Abby Arcane reawakens a deep grief over the loss of Maria’s daughter, Shawna, drawing her into the dark supernatural mysteries emerging from the swamp." Co-writer Gary Dauberman has said that DC has been giving them a lot of creative freedom, even encouraging them to go as graphic as they want and push the series into hard R territory.
We always set out to make Swamp Thing as hard R as we could and go graphic with the violence, with the adult themes and make it as scary as possible. Because we’re doing it through the DC streaming service, they really pushed us, although they didn’t have to push hard, for us to go as extreme as we could. We really took our inspiration from the Alan Moore run in Swamp Thing, this landmark I think run. Fans of that series will know it gets pretty weird and extreme and scary. We really wanted to live up to that standard that Moore set up back in the ‘80s.