Black Swan Writer Shopping Stalker Thriller XOXO

natalie portman black swan
(Image credit: Fox Searchlight)

While I never made myself a "Eric's Favorite Movies of 2010" list, public or private, if I did the top two movies would have been The Social Network at number one and Black Swan at number two. Sure, they aren't the most shocking choices in the world, but, if anything, the number of lists the two titles showed up on demonstrates how incredibly great they were. Now, in a very strange way, the two movies are being combined.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Mark Heyman, one of the three writers behind Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, has produced a script called XOXO that has started getting studio attention. A thriller that seems to have close ties to Fatal Attraction, the story is about a man in his 20s who begins a digital relationship with a girl on Facebook, but things start taking a dark turn when the girl becomes obsessed with him and begins to stalk him. Rather than have the two leads sitting in front of computers chatting with each other, which would likely be a total bore, an unidentified source said that "stylized visual sequences" will be used while the man and woman are interacting on their computers. The article says that Aronofsky will serve as a producer, as will one of the producers of Sideways (the article doesn't specify if it's Michael London or George Parra).

As excitement-inducing as all of the names mentioned above are, I can't help but be skeptical about this project. While the comparisons to Fatal Attraction are obvious, one must also point out that both Obsessed and Swimfan came out in the last decade using the exact same premise. Throw in the fact that Catfish, one of last year's best documentaries, constructed a similar idea just last year, this project is looking less and less fresh.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.