Considering director Alexandre Aja confirmed it to Devin several days ago (the resulting interview is HERE), this isn’t exactly fresh news, but its appearance in the trades makes it as official as it can get: Paramount’s upcoming adaptation of Charles Burns’ graphic novel Black Hole is being penned by not one but two high-profile writers, namely Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary.
The V.I.N.C.E.N.T.-free story, which took Burns a decade to finish, follows a group of 1970s-era teens who contract a sexually transmitted disease that produces horrifying physical mutations. Aja, whose remake of The Hills Have Eyes hits this week, plans to tackle the surreal tale of depravity and deformity after he finishes his next project, an original spook story. I still haven’t actually read Burns’ grotesque opus, but after hearing so much about it I just decided to order it (through CHUD’s Amazon link, like a good boy should!).
Gaiman and Avary have been popular lately — Matthew Vaughn is currently prepping an adaptation of Gaiman’s novel Stardust, and Avary penned the script for the impending terror flick Silent Hill. Together they worked on the story for Robert Zemeckis’ "performance capture" epic Beowulf. Avary previously had an infamously miserable time adapting Gaiman’s Sandman comic for Warner Bros., but sadly his unused draft and chronicles of studio agony seem to have been stricken from the internets.