At the start of the year we heard that Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman were joining forces to adapt the comic book about a sexual plague called Black Hole, now the news has arrived that they have left the project and that they'd been hard at work on it for around two years.

It seems that the director, David Fincher, the replacement for Alexandre Aja who was originally on the project, was the reason for them leaving. Rather his requirements of the writers was the reason.

The story is that David Fincher has specific requirements of his writers, and asks for ten drafts written over and over, and when Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary were asked if they wanted to continue down that avenue they, unsurprisingly, said no.

"Once they got David Fincher on...David explained his process consisted of having over ten drafts, done over and over, and Roger and I were sort of asked if we wanted to, if we were interested in doing that. And we definitely weren't."

The news from MTV through Bloody Disgusting is that Fincher has their latest draft of the script and can take it from there, other than that there's no word on what's happening with the story or where the director is going to take it.

Gaiman says that they merely stepped aside and it sounds all amicable, and he does say that he hopes the final film remains faithful to the original comic, however that will be up to the director, and perhaps his new writers who will deliver ten drafts.

I wonder, do they get paid more for the ten drafts than they would delivering one that gets made?

Black Hole is written by Charles Burns (Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com). It's set in the 1970's and tells the story of school kids who begin to get infected with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) which is aptly named the "teen plague".

It spreads like wild fire and the effects range from a mild rash to the more extreme of growing extra body parts. Unsurprisingly these kids are treated as monsters and outcasts, and start to band together in their own community.

It's an interesting sounding project, and a shame since I do rate Avary highly and think that coupled with Gaiman they could have produced something very interesting on this adaptation. Do you think this is process gone mad though? Did Fincher really need ten drafts, or could he have worked with the writers a bit more?