David Fincher To Direct Graphic Novel Adaptation Black Hole

David Fincher To Direct Graphic Novel Adaptation Black Hole

By Hunter Stephenson/Feb. 20, 2008 11:39 pm EST

“David Fincher tackling STDs, not like herpes, worse,” is the imagined, beaded brow pitch to the studio. It worked. The director of the Oscar-shunned modern masterpiece Zodiac, as well as Fight Club, is attached to direct a film based on the comics-turned-acclaimed graphic novel, Black Hole, by Charles Burns. Brad Pitt’s Plan B is producing the project, but like DiCaprio’s Akira, no official word if Pitt is involved to star. Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman were set to adapt the screenplay in 2006, but no word if Fincher is doing his own thing here.

Set in the ’70s, Black Hole is a 12-issue comic that followed teenagers who spread “the Bug,” a fictional, incurable STD that causes the sexually-active to develop horrific physical deformities, as well as those who didn’t catch it but reacted to the plague. As you might expect, this turns the infected teens into social outcasts, and the plot synopsis at publisher Pantheon Graphics reads, “What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie portrait of the nature of high school alienation itself – the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety and ennui, the longing for escape. And then the murders start.”

Fincher’s next theatrical release is December’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button starring Brad Pitt, which is already receiving almighty buzz. Unlike Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, I don’t think Fincher has crafted his end-all-be-all American classic yet. And while Black Hole sounds too fun and twisted to be it, I hope he’ll next be gearing up for the serious sci-fi epic Rendezvous with Rama, one of several projects he’s latched to, another being the Eliot Ness serial killer flick Torso. But a Fincher Ghost World, are you friggin’ kidding? The eclipse has played into some strangely bi-polar news today, and this may be the peak of awesome.

Of note, Alexandre Aja was originally on board to direct this, but he has other fish to fry (and can I just add that a mere two /Film comments for his upcoming Piranha 3D periodically had me questioning life?).

Discuss: With Black Hole, will David Fincher do for sex what Darren Afonofsky did for hard drugs and Keith David in Requiem for a Dream?

Source Link: Variety