Netflix landed a long-gestating adaptation of Charles Burns’ graphic novel “Black Hole,” and gave it a straight to series order after a competitive bidding war.
The streamer bought the rights to Burns’ best-selling series from New Regency, who will stay on as the co-studio for the project. “Black Hole” will be a one-hour drama series.
Jane Schoenbrun will write and direct the series for Netflix. The filmmaker is best known for their Sundance horror film “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” “I Saw the TV Glow” and the experimental documentary “A Self-Induced Hallucination.”
“Black Hole” follows one high school senior, who decides to test her small town’s old legend. “There’s an old myth that haunts the seemingly perfect small town of Roosevelt: if you have sex too young, you’ll contract the ‘bug,’ a virus that literally turns you into a ‘monster’ from your worst nightmares,” the logline reads. When Chris finds herself infected, a new threat emerges. She must survive in the woods as an outcast, while a serial killer attempts to hunt the “infected” one-by-one.
The graphic novel is a twelve-issue comic book written and illustrated by Burns. “Black Hole” was set in the suburbs of Seattle in the mid-1970s. In the early 2000s, several feature film adaptations were in the works one with French director Alexandre Aja set to lead the project and “Pulp Fiction” co-writer Roger Avary attached to adapt the screenplay. Another reported 2008 adaptation was set to be produced by by Paramount Pictures and directed by David Fincher, but he signed off of the project officially in 2013. New Regency and Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B then picked up the title in February 2018.
The drama series will be executive produced by Burns; Erin Levy; Plan B Entertainment; and Yariv Milchan, Arnon Milchan, Natalie Lehmann and Laura Delahaye for New Regency.
