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BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO Shannon Eric Denton and Keith Giffen'sBoom! Studios graphic novel, 10 might be number one for Dimension and Ice Cube's Thesp. The story’s been optioned by Thesp. We caught Giffen before his morning coffee to learn more about this horrific game of survival of the fittest.
Ice Cube and Matt Alvarez of CubeVision are negotiating to produce along with David Alpert and Rick Jacobs of Circle of Confusion.
For those PULSE readers who missed this Boom! Studios’ graphic novel when it originally came out, Keith Giffen cued us in to the particulars of the story. He said, “Imagine you come home from work, after a vacation, pick up your mail and find this box among it with nothing on it except your address and name. Then you open the box, there is a gun inside with a ten bullet clip and a note welcoming you to this year’s Hunter/Seeker competition. You might think it’s a joke and throw it away, but, it’s deadly serious.”
“Basically, you’re thrown into this deadly competition that you never dreamed existed,” Giffen continued. “Also participation is mandatory, because each of the contestants has been given the name and address of another contestant, while one person – chosen at random – has been given a master list of all ten.”
It’s kind of like taking the best elements of Battle Royale and The World’s Most Dangerous Game and mixing them together with the horror genre. Giffen is a big proponent of horror as arbitrary. He doesn’t believe there is a lot of rhyme and reason to horror. “With 10 I just wanted to explore the fact that I think horror is random,” Giffen said. “I believe when people are placed in horrific situations, they rarely get an explanation of what is going on. One of the things that drives me crazy in horror is that if there are five survivors to an end of the world scenario, one of them is always an expert or specialist who can explain intimately what is going on. I never bought into that. If you’re there fighting vampires, no one will be saying ‘This is why vampires are real.’ It’s just not going to happen. This is my way of playing around with that random quality of horror, where you’re thrown into a situation that requires a reaction that you don’t have time to analyze and deal with.”
“It’s just the idea of people being thrown into a completely outrageous situation – a deadly situation – and how do ‘real’ people deal with that?” Giffen continued. “Our main character was on vacation when the contest began. It’s been a week of kill or be killed and he has no idea. This poor innocent guy just steps into the middle of this situation and has to react. 10 was just a quick-fix horror story. In our graphic novelette, we just tell the story of the last twenty minutes of this guy’s life.”
Working with Denton and Giffen on this story was artist Andy Kuhn. Giffen’s a big fan of Kuhn’s work. “He’s one of the first names I invoke when people ask me who I’d like to draw any of my works,” Giffen enthused. “Andy penciled, inked and lettered the whole thing. I love his stuff!”
It was thanks to Rick Jacobs that 10 was “farmed around so quickly.” Giffen said, “Rick approached Gustin Nash, the screenwriter. Gustin liked the concept so much that he was willing to spec out a script. From there, Ice Cube got interested in 10 and it snowballed from there. I think everyone involved id a great job of ferrying this thing along.”
“The way Gustin Nash took the idea, without losing the horrific elements of it, was fantastic,” Giffen continued. “He just did a bang-up job of it. Of course when you go from comics to film, certain changes will have to be made to accommodate the different medias. I doubt very much that a single issue story – I couldn’t even call it a graphic novel, it was really like a short story – would fill up two hours of film time. I think Gustin did a spectacular job on the screenplay. I really approached the screenplay hesitantly, thinking ‘what if I hate it?’. But I was really pleased with the end result.”
Of course when you go from comic to film certain changes will have to be made to accommodate different medias. I doubt very much that a single issue story – I wouldn’t even call it a graphic novel it was like a short story – will fill up two hours of film time. I think Gustin did a spectacular job on the screenplay. I really approach that screenplay hesitantly thinking what if I hate it. I was really pleased with the end result. I’m very proud of 10.”
“But I’m taking everything one step at a time,” Giffen continued. “10 is my ‘hat trick’ with Creature Core optioned and TAG at Universal. It’s kind of cool and kind of nice. I never approach a comic book project as let me write something specifically to be sold as a movie. If someone happens to like the idea enough and want to pursue it, great. I’m keeping in mind though that hundreds of things get optioned, dozens of things get made into actual films. So, let’s see how the next step works out.”
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