Movies
Luca Guadagnino Gives Update on ‘American Psycho’ Remake Casting
Luca Guadagnino (Bones and All, Suspiria) will direct a brand new interpretation of the 1991 book American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis for Lionsgate, and the filmmaker has given an interesting update at CinemaCon today, THR reports.
In December, Variety had reported that Austin Butler (Dune: Part Two) was poised to pick up an axe as Patrick Bateman. Guadagnino’s update reveals that’s not quite the case.
To start, the filmmaker called the source material “a book that I deeply love that is something that has influenced me so much.”
The director confirmed that Scott Z. Burns wrote the script, which is said to be a new adaptation of Ellis’s novel and not a remake of the 2000 film. As for casting, he told the CinemaCon crowd that he’s in current “conversation with exciting performers to play the leads.” As in, no one has been set to star just yet.
That was predicted by author Bret Easton Ellis himself on a recent episode of The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. “I have a feeling it’s fake news,” Easton Ellis mused. “I heard somewhere, from someone, that there are no contracts. Austin Butler hasn’t signed anything to play Patrick Bateman. Luca doesn’t have a deal. Scott Burns, who is supposed to write the screenplay, doesn’t have a deal either.”
The author continued, “From various sources that I have, this is just fake news that was put out there to see how an audience is going to react.”
In the story, “A wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale in the 2000 movie), hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.”
The new film will be produced by Frenesy Films, executive produced by Sam Pressman, son of Edward R. Pressman, producer of the first adaptation, through his company Pressman Film.
“We are thrilled to add another elite filmmaker to our upcoming slate,” said Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair Adam Fogelson. “Luca is a brilliant artist, and the perfect visionary to create a whole new interpretation of this potent and classic IP.”
Jacob Elordi was also previously considered the frontrunner to play Patrick Bateman in the upcoming adaptation. Elordi will next be seen playing the Monster in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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