Netflix is diving into eerie, surreal territory as they group up with Jane Schoenbrun, the visionary filmmaker behind I Noticed the TV Glow, to adapt Charles Burns’ cult-classic graphic novel Black Gap into a brand new collection.
If the information sounds acquainted, that’s as a result of Black Gap has been circling Hollywood for years. First printed between 1995 and 2005, Burns’ haunting coming-of-age horror story has lengthy tempted filmmakers.
Administrators like David Fincher, Alexandre Aja, and Rick Famuyiwa every tried to carry it to life, with Famuyiwa most lately connected to a function movie adaptation again in 2018. None of these variations made it previous improvement.
Based on Selection, Schoenbrun has formally signed on to develop the graphic novels for tv in addition to direct. This looks like an ideal pairing when you think about Schoenbrun’s fascination with teenage alienation, identification, and surreal horror, that are themes explored Black Gap.
The official description of the Netflix collection reads: “There’s an outdated delusion that haunts the seemingly excellent small city of Roosevelt: when you’ve got intercourse too younger, you’ll contract the ‘bug,’ a virus that actually turns you right into a ‘monster’ out of your worst nightmares.
“Absurd, proper? That’s what Chris at all times assumed, till, after one reckless evening initially of senior yr, she finds herself contaminated. Now she’ll be solid out to the woods to dwell with the opposite contaminated, the place a chilling, new menace emerges: a serial killer who’s searching them one after the other.”
Burns’ Black Gap, which received a Harvey Award in 2006, follows a bunch of youngsters in Nineteen Seventies Seattle who contract a mysterious, sexually transmitted illness that causes grotesque bodily mutations.
It’s half physique horror, half melancholic coming-of-age story, wrapped in moody black-and-white illustrations which have made it a staple of underground comics tradition.
Whereas we don’t know if Netflix’s model will retain the ‘70s Pacific Northwest setting, it’s straightforward to think about Schoenbrun leaning into that dreamlike nostalgia. Their earlier work, together with We’re All Going to the World’s Truthful and the upcoming Teenage Intercourse and Demise at Camp Miasma, exhibits a definite skill to seize unsettling emotion by way of the eyes of disillusioned youth, typically mixing the mundane with the terrifying.
Black Gap’s moody themes, surreal physique horror, and emotional depth line up completely with the director’s knack for exploring the liminal areas between concern and self-discovery.
Given Schoenbrun’s distinct visible and storytelling fashion, this adaptation may lastly be the one which breaks Black Gap’s lengthy streak of improvement purgatory.