You know that Hollywood has really run out of ideas when it starts planning to remake a film that got negative reviews to begin with. Lionsgate has hired screenwriter Noble Jones to pen a remake of American Psycho, the 2000 screen adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel. Although the project has not yet been green-lit, and no director or cast is currently attached, Jones is developing the script for the remake, which will be less glossy and more low-budget than the original.
Since its release in 2000 at the Sundance Film Festival, American Psycho has acquired a reputation as a contemporary cult classic, primarily for lead Christian Bale's tour de force performance as yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman; however, the film received mixed reviews when it first premiered, and the Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan referred to the movie as a "stillborn, pointless piece of work."
Even though a (presumably more imaginative) musical adaptation of the film is reportedly in the works, can't you guys at Lionsgate come up with something a little fresher than a low-budge rehash of a slasher movie set in the '80s? There are only so many Huey Lewis and the News jokes that will resonate with 2012 moviegoers, and there are only so many actors who can play Bateman with the slick, campy, steel-abbed, hair-gelled aplomb that Bale lent to the role ("murders and executions" instead of "mergers and acquisitions," anyone?) If you're going to adapt/remake a turn-of-the-century classic, may I suggest Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, or perhaps Ashton Kutcher's and Seann William Scott's 2000 wistful and nostalgic coming of age tale, Dude, Where's My Car?
