If news of an adaptation of Charles Burns’ Black Hole feels like deja vu, that’s because there have been multiple attempts to bring the graphic novels, which were published from 1995 to 2005, to the screen—including a 2018 announcement that Rick Famuyiwa (one of many directors who almost made DC’s The Flash) would be tackling it as a feature. But Netflix has seemingly found a winning approach, giving a straight-to-series order to a creative team that includes Jane Schoenbrun, director of the critically acclaimed I Saw the TV Glow.
As Variety reports, Schoenbrun—who also made We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and has the intriguing-sounding Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma on the way—has signed on to “develop the graphic novels for television as well as direct.”
The official description is as follows, according to the trade: “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. Absurd, right? That’s what Chris always assumed, until, after one reckless night at the beginning of senior year, she finds herself infected. Now she’ll be cast out to the woods to live with the other infected, where a chilling, new threat emerges: a serial killer who’s hunting them one by one.”
Burns wrote and illustrated Black Hole across 12 issues—a compilation was also released—and the title, which won a Harvey Award in 2006, has gained cult-classic status. You can’t tell from the logline if Netflix’s Black Hole will retain the original’s mid-1970s Seattle setting, but that feels like a good fit for Schoenbrun; they have a well-proven track record of capturing unease through the eyes of teens who have perhaps seen too much already—blended with eerie nostalgia, as was vividly experienced by I Saw the TV Glow‘s TV-obsessed main characters.
Would-be Black Hole adapters over the years have also included Alexandre Aja (Crawl) and David Fincher, among others.
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