David Fincher to Direct Graphic Novel Adaptation Black Hole
Update: Neil Gaiman said on his personal blog yesterday that he is still co-writing the Black Hole script with Roger Avary. Seems rather stoked on Fincher’s involvement as well. Thanks to reader ‘Nancy.’
“David Fincher tackling STDs, not like herpes, worse,” is the imagined, beaded brow pitch to the studio. It worked. The director of the Oscar-shunned modern masterpiece Zodiac, as well as Fight Club, is attached to direct a film based on the comics-turned-acclaimed graphic novel, Black Hole, by Charles Burns. Brad Pitt’s Plan B is producing the project, but like DiCaprio’s Akira, no official word if Pitt is involved to star. Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman were set to adapt the screenplay in 2006, but no word if Fincher is doing his own thing here.
Set in the ’70s, Black Hole is a 12-issue comic that followed teenagers who spread “the Bug,” a fictional, incurable STD that causes the sexually-active to develop horrific physical deformities, as well as those who didn’t catch it but reacted to the plague. As you might expect, this turns the infected teens into social outcasts, and the plot synopsis at publisher Pantheon Graphics reads, “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.”
Fincher’s next theatrical release is December’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button starring Brad Pitt, which is already receiving almighty buzz. Unlike Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, I don’t think Fincher has crafted his end-all-be-all American classic yet. And while Black Hole sounds too fun and twisted to be it, I hope he’ll next be gearing up for the serious sci-fi epic Rendezvous with Rama, one of several projects he’s latched to, another being the Eliot Ness serial killer flick Torso. But a Fincher Ghost World, are you friggin’ kidding? The eclipse has played into some strangely bi-polar news today, and this may be the peak of awesome.
Of note, Alexandre Aja was originally on board to direct this, but he has other fish to fry (and can I just add that a mere two comments for his upcoming Piranha 3D periodically had me questioning life?).
Along with Blankets, Black Hole has been in my “graphic novel requisite procrastination” queue on Amazon for at least six months. I didn’t realize it was originally published by the long-gone Kitchen Sink Press, a company I fondly remember back in the day when I bought comics, if only for seeing its Crow titles amongst the latest The Maxx and Pitt. Damn, this is going to be cool flick, nostalgia can take a hike. And shout out to Paramount Pictures for booking Fincher for three flicks in a row now. That rocks.
Source Link: Variety
Interview: Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman
Last week we got the chance to sit down and talk with Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction, Rules of Attraction) and Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Stardust), the screenwriter’s of Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf. During the roundtable interview, we heard tales about the 10 year struggle to bring Beowulf to the screen, the magic of performance capture, the troubles with adapting a poem into a feature film, the possibility of comic books during the Writers Strike, and the mismarketing of Stardust. Check out the interview below.
Question: When did you guys start on Beowulf?
Gaiman: 10 and half year now. We went off to write the first draft of the script for Beowulf in May 1997. And wrote it, in two weeks of absolute madness, and then we came back and sold it to Bob Zemeckis’s company for Roger to direct and it even got green lit, which is one of those funny things about movies because green lights can also get turned off again. So, just before he was about to go scouting for locations. And then Imagemovers and we tried to get it made together, and we eventually got the rights back, and Roger was about to make it himself when the phantom call came.
Avary: I was planning on doing a very small production of it with a French producer.
Gaiman: We were looking at 20 million dollars and glove puppet things.
Avary: Can you imagine Terry Gilliam’s Jabberwocky or Polansky’s Macbeth. Ya know, Excalibur was actually a small production in it’s day. Those were the markers, ( “A lot of fog.”) That was what sort of over stylizing to compensate for the lack of ability to do 3D modeling.
Question: Wasn’t there a Beowulf released a few years ago with Gerard Butler?
Gaiman: Yeah? What’s weird about this process is the length of time it took to do this strange and wonderful thing, all of the performances were actually recorded in October-November 2005. We started production of this film in the beginning of 2005. So their film sank without trace in between.
Avary: Let’s also not forget the Kristoff Lambert’ cyberpunk Beowulf that was made way back when.
Gaiman: Ah, that was a Beowulf indeed.
Avary: The mention of that film put abstract horror in my heart, and then I saw it and I wasn’t so afraid of it anymore because it wasn’t really Beowulf at all.
Question: Did you think this was gonna be animation from the beginning?
Avary: No, in fact it was impossible to do this film with this process…
Gaiman: Cuz none of this stuff existed.
Question: Motion capture wasn’t around then…
Avary: Motion capture actually was around but in a very rudimentary and what Bob has done with this digitally enhanced live action isn’t only motion capture, it is a collection of different technologies. Motion capture was one of them. I would suggest that this version of Beowulf is sort of like 3D rotoscoping. Your not just painting over an image it’s a 3D image.
Gaiman: The computer guys actually had tshirts that sat on the back of “the devils rotoscopers.”
Question: Did you change the dialogue when you found out it was going to this format?
Gaiman: Yes, we wrote a much longer dragon fight. The biggest difference is the first half is… One of the cool things about this script book is the first half is Roger’s introduction and the first draft from 97 and then the stuff he shouldn’t have told anybody about the financial offers with Steven Bing, and then you get our last draft. The 2005 draft. September 11th 2005 and this was basically what was shot, so this gives you a sense of the changes
Avary: And you get some drinking songs.
Question: And what we get is the penis taped to leg, of what didn’t get into the movie.
Avary: That’s right. Those were drawn by a friend of my mine Steven Norrington. He does story boards for me occasionally.
Gaiman: See the problem with the first version is that “How do we stylize a dragon fight flying between a man and a dragon in a 20 million dollar movie?” With this it is Bob telling us anything is possible. You guys go for it and give me a 10 minute dragon fight. I remember phoning Bob and I had this idea where they go under the sea and have a fight in a shipwreck underwater and I called Bob and said I think I’m going a little overboard and he said-
Avary: He said you can have chickens running around and it will cost me the same.
Gaiman: He said there is nothing you can do to make this cost me more money then it already has. Its all expensive. Do what your imagination gives you. So we did.
Question: But you didn’t overtrick it. Do you think you could have added a couple more scenes?
Gaiman: I hope not. For us what made it, I to think of Beowulf as a chamber piece. And some of those movies I loved as a kid like the lion in winter, what I was most concerned about was that I knew one of the engines that drove the script were things that weren’t said. And you could have characters that all had their secrets and the things that needed to be communicated in looks, pauses, and silences and my worry was if the technology would allow you to see that in the performances, if subtlety would allow you to communicate
Avary: It’s the quiet moments in the film which are to me most impressive. When Anthony Hopkins is asking Beowulf if he killed the mother and he gives him the little smile, its an absolute Anthony Hopkins moment where he drifts inside himself, its all very pure in that moment. It’s all the very quiet moments.
Question: What made you think of the John Malkovich character, which I considered to be like a villain?
Gaiman: He’s straight from the poem and he serves that function in the poem.
Question: What about the part where he ducks into the water and-
Avary: That was us, I always imagined that a meat hall back then would have a piss pit.
Gaiman: In the very first draft we had them going outside to pee.
Avary: Did we?
Gaiman: Yeah. Cuz that is where they discuss if Jesus and Odin get into a knife fight who would win, which was taken out.
Question: Sort of like he’s the coward?
Avary: Again, in the poem he was the guy who killed his own brother.
Gaiman: I think we gave motivation to people, and we filled them in because otherwise, I sometimes get the feeling that some Anglo Saxons buffs would have been happy with as an adaptation is a blank screen, and you see someone walking up, preferably them, and they recite in Anglo Saxon all 1300 lines from the poem. And walking off again.
Question: How influential was The Viking with Kirk Douglas?
Avary: I watched every Viking movie in preparation of this film, and what I love is Kirk Douglas’s rationale to why he shaves his beard, in the movie The Vikings. Everybody has a beard in the movie except Kirk Douglas because he basically, I’m Kirk Douglas and he is going to do whatever he damn well pleases… He has to show off his chin and so they come up with this crazy rationale.
Question: So what is your fave Viking movie?
Avary: ……Beowulf. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. What is interesting to me about Vikings is that they were failed farmers.
Gaiman: No it’s really just what they did. It basically meant raiding. They were raiders, they went out and raided.
Question: Your going on the strike right?
Gaiman: Yes.
Question: Can we expect more comics of this later?
Gaiman: I’ve got to the embarrassing point where I’ve had to say no to people in the movies anyways because I have some books to finish that my publishers are saying they will publish whether I finish or not in September 2008.
Avary: I earn my living off the movies, and I may start doing comics to but this was really a quick way to interrupt us with Castle Wolfenstein which we were given the script for (which your going to direct, right?) Yes, I’m fifteen minutes away from finishing and wondering if I have time to do that on Sunday! Even if I do, because the nature of the strike I won’t be able to mount the production so its hurting me in a very big way but I believe it is a righteous cause that must be done.
Question: Why do you believe Stardust didn’t catch on out here?
Gaiman: It’s now done over a hundred million around the world. It’s done very well in many territories. I think, picking my words carefully, if I were paramount I probably would have paid more attention when the early reviews came in saying pay no attention to the dreadful trailer this is a wonderful movie. And I probably would have looked at the trailer and tried to figure out… In the UK we didn’t use those trailers and used trailers that felt more like the film than Pirates of The Caribbean Lite or whatever. I think there were marketing missteps and having said that I—
Avary: Beowulf is a very tough film to market and I think they are doing a bang up job of it.
Gaiman: They are doing a marvelous job on something equally as problematic.
Question: What were the biggest changes from the poem?
Avary: One of the things Robert wanted to do is originally in or script and originally in the poem Beowulf returns and doesn’t stay in Denmark. Robert wanted to show where all the characters were and show the contrasts of the time and place and how Christianity had gone from a minor cult like thing to a-
Gaiman: Also the biggest problem we had in our earlier drafts, 3 quarters of the way through the movie you need to abandon the whole cast you’ve been introduced to a whole new cast. Bob said as a director it would be easier for me to see them age and grow old and show their children… You know one of my favorite lines that didn’t make it to the screen, was when older Beowulf is talking to Ursula, he says you remind me of your mother Ursa and she says that was my grandmother, and you realize time is passing.
Comic-Con Preview: 20 Minutes of Beowulf 3D
Last night a movie theater full of film press packed a big digital theater in downtown San Diego to watch 20 minutes of Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf. Screenwriters Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman were on hand to field questions following the screening. The screening started late because the theater was at the end of a multi-level labyrinth they call an outdoor mall. Security was tight - we weren’t allowed to take in our camera, iPhone, or even digital audio recording device. We are the first public audience to see any of the footage so it seems reasonable enough. Although I’m not sure what someone would do with blurry handheld footage of the double processed 3D footage. I assume such footage would be totally unwatchable.
They began the screening with the movie trailer which is now online. Gaiman, in a Superman’s Dead t-shirt, told the crowd to put on their “magic beowulf glasses.” Te lights went out and the trailer played in digital 3d. I won’t focus long on the trailer since it’s now public, but I will say that it was definitely much better in 3D. At one point the blood sprays off the screen at the audience, which is a cool effect.
Neil promises that Beowulf will be the biggest 3D release ever, simutanously being shown in IMAX 3D, Real D on digital screens and in normal Dolby. Avary talked about the 10 year journey from script to screen and gushed over how “It’s like somebody reached inside my brain” and put the images on screen. He jokingly explain that he wanted to make the film to make the story easier to understand for future generations of high school students.
They then showed us the entire second reel of the film, which was almost 0 minutes in length.
“The reason why we’re showing you the second reel is because it’s the only thing that exists,” explains Gaiman, who says the rest of the film is just data.Gaiman explained the set-up of Reel #1. A hole has opened and a monster named Grendel has started eating people because he hates the noise. Beowulf comes across the sea with his huge group of men to battle the monster. He strips down and says he will fight the monster with no weapons. Beowulf nearly defeats the monster and that is where Reel #2 starts.
Gaiman said that “Beowulf is the oldest story in the English language.”
Avary added: “told with the most modern technology.”
The two have a comic chemistry. Avary is always stepping over Gaiman’s words and apologizing. Gainman offers quick quips in return.
Reel 2 begins with Beowulf kicking the cut off arm of Grendel. It’s instantly impressive. The animation in Beowulf’s face, and the skin imperfections is the most realistic human facial animation to date. But you still have that weird motion capture movement. Which I’ve always found really odd since logically motion capture should result in more realistic movement, right? But instead you get some very robotic movements at times. This is not to say that Beowulf isn’t a vast improvement over Final Fantasy and the Polar Express, because it is. The technology is unfortunately not there yet. However, the 3D technology is absolutely amazing.
Beowulf and crew return to be rewarded by the King. Grendel’s mother attacks the town and Beowulf is pissed that he was never told about the mother. The king looks exactly like a digital copy of Anthony Hopkins which asks the question (which was asked later) why do all the work involved in motion capture animation if you’re just going to give the actor the same look? I come from a school of thought which believes that the characters should be there only to support the story. And having a character look like an actor is not conductive of that goal. This is one of the reasons that Pixar is so successful. They hire the actors purely based o who would be a better fit for the character.
Beowulf enters the watery cave alone. This is the scene from the trailer where Ray Winstone’s character wades through the water in the dark cave.He finds a cavern full of treasures and yells “show yourself!” and “What are you!?” A tail quickly flew by the foreground. “Are you the one they call Beowulf” Finally we she the monster. The monster is basically Angelina Jolie with a long ponytail which turns into a dragon like tail. She rises up from the water and it’s very clear that Angelina Jolie is very nude (except slightly covered up). Everyone was in awe at how real and hot she looked. “What do you know of me demon!?” “Under your armor you are as much a monster as my so Grendel.” She strokes his sword in a very sexual way explaining that it’s been a long time since a man has visited her. He hand melts his sword. She offers Beowulf a deal which would make him the greatest and longest living king to ever live. The clip ends with them kissing.
Gaiman says that’s the genius of Robert Zemeckis, before taking questions from the crowd.
“What do you want to know? We will answer or we will lie!”
He confirms that the film was 100% motion capture: “They wore those suits all those dots on them, looking much like the cast from tron.”
Avary explained that the motion capture technology allowed Bob to do full takes without any cuts which translated into some incredible performances: “That’s performance capture. It’s digitally enhanced acting.”
Someone asks the question: why do the motion capture and animation if you just want the characters to look like the actors that portray them. Gainman explains that Beowulf doesn’t, which I think was a lame answer. He saw that the aging of Beowulf in the film would not be possible without this technology. He then makes a good point: “If you have John Malkovich or Anthony Hopkins, why not?” He wondered out loud how the Academy will react. Will digital versions of actors get award recognition?
Roger explained that he grew up loving Legend and Excalibur, and that Beowulf was the one story he connected with in High School. It hit him that no movie was ever made of the story and put it on his list of ideas. Then when Avary was fired from the big screen adaptation of Gainman’s Sandman “for being too honest about his intentions and ideas”, he studied the story again and asked Gaiman to co-write the film with him,
Avary compares the story of Beowulf with the game of telephone. The resulting story has more than a few plot holes which forced him to be creative to cover up. Neil and Roger wrote the script in a two week stretch in Mexico in May 1997, while drinking bad Mexican beer by a pool, passing floppy discs between them. Zemeckis read the script and for years wanted Avary to direct it, but eventually took on the task himself.
They joked that the original dragon fight was very talky and lacked much action because they wrote it with a small budget in mind. Zemeckis hired them to rewrite the film and encouraged them to “go wild”.
Gaiman also confirmed that they are aiming for a PG-13 rating despite the violence, blood and previously discussed nudity of Angelina Jolie. I’m wondering if they can pull this off. He reiterated the previous statement that they are planning to release an unrated version on DVD at some point.
Avary praises Zemeckis for having a writers mind and having the creative collaborative excitement that some directors lack.
Gaiman describes the footage: “For me it felt like wandering around in a graphic novel.”
He sad that the technology is getting better every day and this may be the bet way to do Sandman, whenever that actually happens. He praised the 3D technology as being a revolution for cinema: “This will actually be a reason to go to the cinema again.”
They then showed a teaser which showed quick cuts of all the cool moments from the reel and trailer.
I was impressed by parts of the presentation but the motion capture technology is clearly not there yet. The people still have that creepy zombie look and at times have unnatural movement. The 3D could be key to getting people to see this film in the theater. It will be interesting to see if audiences are interested enough to see this story on the big screen.
Roger Avary to make Return to Castle Wolfenstein Movie
Many of you might not remember this but, before Quake, Before Doom, there was Wolfenstein 3D - considered to be the first first person shooter video gameof all time. It’s even more popular sequel, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, was released in November 2001. And now Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary is set to write and direct a feature film adaptation.
The game is based on Castle Wewelsburg, a 17th century castle occupied by the Germans under Heinrich Himmler’s control, and used for occult rituals and practices. The game begins in Nazi-occupied Europe during 1943 and revolves around U.S. Army Ranger B.J. Blazkowicz, who, along with another agent, is sent to investigate rumors surrounding one of Heinrich Himmler’s personal projects, the SS Paranormal Division. The agents are, however, captured before completing their mission and are imprisoned in Castle Wolfenstein. Blazkowicz must escape the castle and continue investigating the activities of the SS Paranormal Division, which include research on resurrecting corpses, bio-technology, and secret weapons.
While Return to Castle Woldenstein is technically a sequel, without the name and the occasional in-game references, it might be unrecognizable as a part of the series.
There are not many video game properties that have the potential to be made into an entertaining movie, but this may be one of them. And Roger Avary is a geek an academy award winning writer in his own right. In addition to co-writing the upcoming Robert Zemeckis computer animated Beowulf with Neil Gaiman, Avary was also behind The Rules of Attraction and Killing Zoe, two very underrated indie films which you should probably add to your Netflix list. Oh yeah, and he helped scribble out a little film titled Pulp Fiction.