Darren Aronofsky on the unique journey of adapting a screenplay for the children’s novel Monsters Club

Darren Aronofsky is best known as a director who tackles big ideas, complex material, and complex characters, often in adult dramas. A new one is coming with Brendan Fraser Format But before it hits theaters in December, it’s making waves in an unexpected place with a new children’s book.

The author has teamed up with writing partner Ari Handel on Personal monster clubOut of HarperCollins now. Described as the first chapter of a new adventure series, monster club Inspired by Aronofsky’s childhood in Brooklyn, where he is now raising his own son.

Like almost everything else in 11-year-old Eric “Doodles” King’s life, King’s Wonderland, the amusement park his great-grandfather founded, was damaged when a hurricane hit his beloved Coney Island. With hungry real estate developers surrounding the ruins, Eric’s family is torn apart by the threat of losing everything. that not monster clubIn an RPG created by his friends, Eric’s life would be pretty terrifying. So when his friends start to think monster club As a child’s game and more interested in other things, Eric can’t handle it. But then he stumbles upon a long-lost bottle of magic ink that brings his monster drawings to life, and suddenly, monster club It’s not just for fun anymore.

The fact of being so close Format It’s just a coincidence, as Aronofsky says the hollywood reporter That it wasn’t planned that way, “it’s just laziness”. It’s also a testament to not giving up on a good idea, as the duo tried to turn the project into a movie a few years ago. But at the suggestion of a writer friend, Aronofsky and Handel changed course and adapted their script into a children’s novel. in conversation THRAronofsky explains the biggest challenges to perfecting the story, the “magical” nature of growing up in Brooklyn and Coney Island, and stars Sadie Sink and Logan Lerman’s obsession with darkness.

When did the idea for a children’s book series occur to you?

As a parent, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. After I finished working on Noah, I had an idea for the movie, which had been running around in my head for many years, which would be a magical story based on my childhood in the southern suburbs of Brooklyn. Cone Island. I finished writing the script with my writing partner, Ari Handel. We’ve been working on this for a few years, and at one point we got ILM involved and did some testing. Somehow this never made it into a movie.

A writer friend of mine, science fiction writer Hugh Howey, said, “Oh, I’d love to read one of your scripts.” I suggested she read it and she was the one who suggested I turn it into a young adult novel – it was her world. I thought it was a really interesting idea, so Ari and I rolled up our sleeves and took a chance and decided to put it out into the world. I don’t want the stories to go to waste and somehow get them out of there. It was the same with that. This is a story that I loved and was passionate about and just wanted to share with people.

The story is personal, inspired by his childhood. What parts specifically reflect your life?

When I was in elementary school, I had a monster club with some friends. We draw our monsters and fight them in our imagination. I graduated from the high school featured in the book, Mark Twain High School at Coney Island. My greatest experience was there on Coney Island, an amazing and magical place in your backyard. It has so much history and magic; [Harry] Houdini performed there. There is an infinite, endless and deep story. He was always an inspiration to me. He appeared in my movie. pi and appeared Requiem for a dream. It’s a place where I get a lot of energy from and I’ve always wanted to share that with the world.

I know Brooklyn is in your blood. appears as a character?

Yes, deep, deep. Coney Island is a special part of Brooklyn. I grew up on the beaches there, and it’s funny when people who’ve never been to Brooklyn come to visit me and say, “Wait, wait. Are there beaches in Brooklyn? I would say, “Yes, it’s a big part of our culture.” It’s not always what people think of when they think of Brooklyn. Once again, this is a very magical place. When most people think of immigrants coming to the United States, they think the first lights they saw were the Statue of Liberty, but it was actually the 10,000 lights at Luna Park in Dreamland, the name of the parks on Coney Island.

You can imagine turn-of-the-century immigrants approaching the horizon and seeing that glow, when most people have probably never seen electricity. It was probably a fantastic sight and was the first amusement park in the New World. There are endless, endless stories of people who started here and ruled the world. It was an amazing place for me to grow up. And there’s always been this constant force of decay because it’s been forgotten for years. I’ve always found such a beautiful aesthetic there, and I’ve always wanted to be a part of all the unique quirks and personalities that live and populate the beach communities.

I’ve read about her writing strategies over the years and wonder what it was like working with Ari in that regard. What was the biggest challenge in translating the screenplay for a children’s novel?

The most interesting thing is in cinema, you have to show and not tell. If you want to get inside the head of a great character, you have to do it in some way with outside forces happening in an outside story. Let’s work on a scene and ask ourselves, how are we going to do this? How are we going to show this? But then we’d realize, oh, there’s an inner monologue. You think of these complex ideas and they are made. It is so easy. It was very difficult to find the character’s inner voice and it took me a while to remember that this was a possible tool for these characters. I’ve never used voice acting in a movie, so there was no real way to get into character in that sense. It freed me in so many ways.

Now I have to ask the obvious: since you’ve adapted your screenplay for a book, have you ever considered adapting this book series for a movie?

There’s an irony there, you know, you write a script to write a book, you write a script to make a movie, right? It was fun. Great now everyone does it. The deal with HarperCollins is for two books, and we just released the second book, which was a lot of fun. Who knows? This could be my first franchise.

That would be surprising. Two books to start and you have a map in mind of how deep it can go?

At the end of the second book there are cliffs. But first we have to write the second book and see how these characters develop in the years after high school. But, you know, high school is coming up.

I loved seeing a good synopsis of Sadie Sink, who is obviously in her movie. Format. Did you steal a copy of it on set or how did that happen?

Yes, that’s where I sent an initial copy of the Gallery, that’s what it’s called. I’m a newbie here. We sent him a gallery, and I sent it to Logan Lerman, who gave me a nice quote, as did Oliver Jeffers, a children’s book author and friend of mine. So I’ve been trying to get in touch with some of my friends that I think 9-12 year olds might respond.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.