Comic book adaptations are as hot as they have ever been and studios are always looking for the next story to make the jump to the big screen. Reported exclusively by Deadline, the latest graphic novel to get the feature film adaptation treatment is Sabrina by Nick Drnaso. The film will be written and directed by Pig’s Michael Sarnoski. It will be produced by New Regency and Rodrigo Teixeira of RT Features.
The story of the 2018 graphic novel is as follows:
A grieving man whose girlfriend goes missing goes to live with his old friend – an Air Force surveillance expert agent who is dealing with a failed marriage. After a grisly videotape is sent anonymously to news outlets, Sabrina’s disappearance goes viral. As the 24-hour news cycle and social media take hold of the story, the two men are targeted by vitriolic conspiracy theorists that threaten their sense of the truth and their faith in each other.
This plot sounds like a twisted and dark affair. Something that is definitely up Sarnoski’s alley. The director’s debut film Pig was a similarly somber and emotional story about a loved one who disappears. Just in that particular instance the loved one was a pig. That film was critically acclaimed when it was released last year and featured one of Nicolas Cage’s best performances. Sarnoski received the National Board of Review Award for Best Directorial Debut and Pig was nominated for Best Feature at the Gotham Awards. The director was also nominated for the Someone to Watch Award and Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Sabrina is similarly critically acclaimed as, just two months after the book was published, it became the first graphic novel to be long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. On top of that, it made the year-end best-of list for the New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, and The Atlantic.
With the combination of great material and a killer creative team, this feels like an adaptation that genre fans should keep their eye out for. New Regency and RT Features have produced some great genre content in the past like Ad Astra and The Lighthouse, so everything is pointing to Sabrina being in that same line of quality.
It is also important to note that Sabrina will not be Sarnoski’s next project. On the horizon, Sarnoski was hand-picked to direct the A Quiet Place spinoff after the critical success of Pig. Sabrina seems like a ways off, but now that it has a director and writer, we should hear more information about this project soon, including casting news and a potential release window. However, whoever does end up being in this adaptation, the fans only have one request: Can Nic Cage be in it…please?!
via Collider