Netflix is entering a Black Hole with its latest series project.
The streamer outbid other outlets for a series based on Charles Burns’ Black Hole comics, with I Saw the TV Glow writer-director Jane Schoenbrun set to adapt the story and direct. Neflix has given a straight-to-series order to the project, which will be Schoenbrun’s first TV series.
Netflix bought the project from New Regency, which owns the rights to Black Hole. New Regency and Netflix are the studios for the show.
Published in 12 issues between 1995 and 2005 and collected as a graphic novel upon its completion, Black Hole centers on a group of teenagers who contract a sexually transmitted disease that causes physical mutations. Here’s now Netflix describes the series: “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.”
Black Hole has gone through a number of stops and starts as a feature film adaptation before the series landed at Netflix. Alexandre Aja and David Fincher were at various points attached to direct movies based on the source material. New Regency acquired rights to the comics in 2018 and developed a film with director Rick Famuyiwa and Plan B (which is executive producing the series). But like the previous efforts, that ended up not happening.
Schoenbrun is the creator, writer and director of Black Hole. The executive producers are Plan B; Erin Levy; New Regency’s Yariv Milchan, Arnon Milchan, Natalie Lehmann and Laura Delahaye; and Burns.
In addition to I Saw the TV Glow — which was nominated for six Independent Spirit Awards — Schoenbrun wrote and directed We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and directed the documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination. Their next feature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, is in post-production. Schoenbrun is repped by CAA, Entertainment 360 and Jackoway Austen.
