Darren Aronofsky on “The Fountain” as a Graphic Novel: “It’s very complicated, this whole thing, so I’ll just try to clarify it. When the film fell apart the first time I had secured the rights to make a graphic novel out of it because I was convinced that Hollywood at some point would shut down the movie. They would realize what they were making and shut down the movie. So I was like, ‘Okay, you have to make sure that we can at least make it into a graphic novel so the story gets told.’
When it did get shut down, I went to Vertigo and Karen Burger, who I sort of knew a little bit. I said, ‘Would you be interested?’ She read the script and she said, ‘Okay.’ She hooked me up with a guy named Kent Williams who is a great, great illustrator… He read it and wanted to be involved and he’s done about 170 original watercolors to illustrate it. But it’s not one of those cheesy comic books where you see Rachel [Weisz] and Hugh [Jackman] running around like they do to promote movies. It’s his interpretation done simultaneous as well as before the film was cast and everything. So it’s kind of a unique situation. I don’t think it’s ever happened before where you have a graphic novel based on a screenplay, as well as a movie based on a screenplay.”
Clarifying which screenplay serves as the basis for the graphic novel, Aronofsky said it’s rooted in the first screenplay, not the version that was shot. “It’s actually a slightly different story, as well. But they’re kind of siblings. They have the same mother, which is the screenplay, but they’re completely independent of each other. They’re not twins, they’re a brother and sister.”
