Rick Famuyiwa is going to direct the film adaptation of Charles Burns’ Black Hole

Rick Famuyiwa (Dope) is going to write and direct Black Hole, New Regency and Plan B’s adaptation of the graphic novel by Charles Burns.

Burns wrote and illustrated 12 issues of Hole over a 10-year period, with the story being collected into graphic novel form in 2005.

The film adaptation had been in the works since 2005 when Alexandre Aja was going to direct it. Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery developed it for a time, and Paramount had it for a while with David Fincher attached to direct.

And you thought your adolescence was scary.

Suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the outset that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested any number of ways – from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) – but once you’ve got it, that’s it. There’s no turning back.

As we inhabit the heads of several key characters – some kids who have it, some who don’t, some who are about to get it – what unfolds isn’t the expected battle to fight the plague, or bring heightened awareness of it, or even to treat it. What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie portrait of the nature of high-school alienation itself – the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety and ennui, the longing for escape.

And then the murders start.

It is an interesting story, which should translate to the big screen.

According to THR, Black Hole is the latest project for New Regency and Plan B. They’ve got sci-fi film Ad Astra, starring Brad Pitt and directed by James Gray, and the two companies are developing Wrong Answer, a project to be helmed by Ryan Coogler (Black Panther), written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and starring Michael B. Jordan.