Aronofsky Takes Sheepshead Scribbles To Big Screen

Manhattan Beach native Darren Aronofsky is kicking butt in Hollywood, and continuing a fine legacy of Southern Brooklyn-born stars. And his latest project is almost 20 years in the making, beginning with an award-winning poem he penned at 13 years old, as a student at Reynolds Junior High School (now Bay Academy).

When we’re kids we all dream big. We want to be firefighters, policemen, actors, artists, presidents and more. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to make those dreams come true, and sometimes we’re lucky or talented enough to get a head start. When Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Black Swan, The Wrestler and Wolverine 2) was 13 years old, he wrote a poem about the end of the world as told from the perspective of Noah, the biblical Ark builder. That poem won him a United Nations poetry competition.

Fast forward a couple of decades. Now Aronofsky is an accomplished writer and director. That poem he wrote decades ago while looking over the waters of Sheepshead Bay is being turned into a graphic novel (illustrated by Nico Henrichon, due out in 2012) and being adapted into a feature film. And, lucky for us, the story ain’t going to be scrubbed for the sensitive masses. It’s going to be brutal, as an end-of-the-world tale ought to be. Aronofsky said in an interview:

Noah was the first person to plant vineyards and drink wine and get drunk. It’s there in the Bible – it was one of the first things he did when he reached land. There was some real survivor’s guilt going on there. He’s a dark, complicated character.

Now, the movie hasn’t been picked up by a studio yet, and the director says he really hopes “they let me make it.” But, come on, Hollywood loves apocalyptic movies with drunk, guilt-ridden characters. Haven’t you seen Oliver Stone’s W?

Check ou the sneak peek at some of the illustrations from Aronofsky’s Noah at Sound on Sight.