Vanguard Films has attached Fanboys director Kyle Newman to adapt the cult-favorite comic-book series Emo Boy. Created by Stephen Emond and published by indie label SLG Comics, Emo Boy follows the travails of the most self-dramatizing young man in the history of the world. Known only as Emo Boy at his high school, this brooding, whining, sensitive, dramatic and intense young man even has special emo powers. Vanguard CEO John H. Williams describes the movie as ‘part Juno, part Zoolander, part Napoleon Dynamite and part Harold And Maude.’
Emo Boy enjoyed a successful a two-year run and was reprinted as a series of graphic novels. Rob Moreland, long-time head of development at Vanguard Films, discovered the property at Comic-Con and has been overseeing its development as a live-action, feature-length comedy.
Moreland comments, ‘Part of what makes this project so great is the way Steve takes the most negative aspects and emotions of adolescence and spins them into greatness, while satirizing high school life from a really fresh point of view.’
‘Emo Boy is a one-of-a-kind character, and the story Steve has crafted is such a unique blend of heart and hilarity,’ adds Newman. ‘It was hard not to fall in love with it.’
Emond, who adapted his own comic as a screenplay, also wrote the upcoming young adult novel Happyface for Little, Brown & Co. This novel with illustrations tells the story of a social experiment gone too far and a teenager learning to face the world with a permanent smile after a family tragedy.
