Key Takeaways

• Adaptation news: Netflix is developing a TV series adaptation of Black Hole after years of failed film attempts.
• Creative team: Jane Schoenbrun will write and direct the series, having secured the rights through a bidding war.
• Plot overview: The story revolves around a myth in the town of Roosevelt about a virus that turns young people into monsters.
• Production details: The series is produced by New Regency and Plan B, with Charles Burns as an executive producer.

Over a span of ten years, Charles Burns wrote and illustrated a twelve-issue comic book series titled Black Hole. The twelve issues were collected in graphic novel form in 2005, and a cinematic adaptation of the story has been in development hell ever since. In 2006, it was announced that Alexandre Aja would be directing a film adaptation, working from a screenplay by Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman. Aja soon moved on, and when David Fincher signed on to direct the film in 2008, Avary and Gaiman also left the project, not interested in going through an arduous process with the new director. Fincher remained attached to Black Hole for several years but eventually let it slip out of his grasp. Eight years ago, Rick Famuyiwa was brought on to write and direct the adaptation… but Famuyiwa couldn’t get it into production, either. Now, Deadline reports that the Netflix streaming service is teaming with We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun to bring Black Hole to the screen as a TV series.

Netflix landed the Black Hole rights by coming out the winner of a bidding war over the property and has given Schoenbrun’s take on the material a straight-to-series order. Schoenbrun will be writing and directing the show. Here’s the description: 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.

The series is coming our way from New Regency and Plan B. Burns serves as an executive producer alongside Plan B, Erin Levy, Yariv Milchan, Arnon Milchan, Natalie Lehmann, and Laura Delahaye for New Regency.

After all the failed attempts to get a film adaptation off the ground, what do you think of Black Hole getting the TV series treatment from Jane Schoenbrun? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

If you’d like to pick up a copy of the Black Hole graphic novel, it’s available on Amazon.