Inspired, perhaps, by the official enshrinement of the Christian Bale-starring American Psycho as Urban Outfitters-approved nostalgic kitsch, Lionsgate has decided it’s time somebody remade Bret Easton Ellis’ story of sex and dying (from an axe to the face) in high society. After all, it’s been over a decade since Mary Harron’s version, which means it barely exists as anything besides a museum curio, and that monologue about Phil Collins that occasionally pops up in Internet comments. So Lionsgate has now hired Noble Jones—a second-unit director on The Social Network whose résumé also includes Taylor Swift music videos, so he knows about both megalomania and plastic artifice—to draft and helm another take on the tale of Patrick Bateman.
Jones will update the creaky, turn-of-the-millennium '80s nostalgia of the original with the more contemporary movie-making strategy of reimagining Bateman in the present day, where he can, say, wax philosophic over the relative musical merits of the Black Eyed Peas while also killing colleagues out of jealousy over their LinkedIn profiles. Similar to the also ill-conceived American Psycho 2: All-American Girl but without a vixenish Mila Kunis to justify it, this American Psycho will, in Deadline’s words, be a “microbudget” (in keeping with its overall micro vision), “down and dirty new version” that explores how Bateman would fare in Bloomberg’s New York. Which, he should do fine, because he also really, really hates fat and smoking and is kind of a sociopath.
