Not everyone likes working with an exacting perfectionist like David Fincher. (Or a detail-obsessed control freak; choose the characterization you prefer.) And writers like Neil Gaiman, who have a lot of other things on their plate, aren't into the idea at all. Which is why Gaiman and Roger Avary are no longer working on the film adaptation of Charles Burns's crazy teen sickness series Black Hole.

(As Devin said when Fincher came on board, Black Hole is set in the suburbs of Seattle in the mid 70s, and it's about a group of teens who contract an STD that turns them into subtle mutants and hideous monsters. What's most interesting about Black Hole is the way the story itself mutates, which is partially because of the fact that it was a serialized tale in 12 parts told over ten years, but it never quite works out the way that you think it will, and in the end coalesces into a truly moving and beautiful story about becoming an adult.)

"Once they got David Fincher on," Gaiman told MTV, "David explained his process consisted of having over ten drafts, done over and over, and Roger and I were sort of asked if we wanted to, if we were interested in doing that. And we definitely weren’t."

So the Beowulf writers moved on, and an as-yet unnamed screenwriter has taken over. The last Gaiman-Avary draft is still in Fincher's hands, but he's unlikely to use it as much more than a jumping off point. I'm saddened by this. Gaiman has the perfect sensibility to not turn this into a maudlin, gory mess. I fear for the project under a different writer, even with Fincher still on board.

UPDATE: Gaiman's own website has been updated with his answer to an email asking about this news. Gaiman's response clarifies things slightly:

It's amazingly old news, and no, it wasn't "creative differences" -- I never met or spoke to David Fincher. Roger and I handed in our last draft of Black Hole last August, before the writer's strike. When the strike was over, I heard from Roger, who had already written a film for David Fincher, that Fincher was on board, but that his method involved having draft after draft written, and then a month or so after that I heard from one of the producers that they'd brought a new writer on who would work cheaper than we would in order that David could have as many drafts as he needed, given that, contractually, Paramount would have to pay for every draft we did. (I don't know if the new writer was starting with the draft that Roger and I did, or starting afresh.) That was almost a year ago. At this point in time, and given how things move in Hollywood, I don't even know if David Fincher is still on board to do Black Hole any longer. Mostly, I just hope that whatever director they wind up with, and whatever script gets shot, it's faithful to Charles Burns' remarkable vision.