Don’t Get Too Excited About That Austin Butler ‘American Psycho’ Reboot Yet

It’s weird to get excited about something when you don’t love the thing it’s based on. I had that feeling with The Boys. I hated those comics. I know they have their fans, but if someone recommended them to me in college it was usually an indicator that the person had a s*** sense of humor and that women should cover their drinks around them at parties. I was not intrigued when a show based on the comics was announced. The creative team behind the show, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, made me feel less hesitant. The results paid off, as The Boys is one of the better television shows currently out there.

That’s the most recent example of waiting to see a team’s intentions before judging a project. I had a similar feeling when it was announced that Luca Guadagnino would adapt American Psycho with Austin Butler set to star. While I enjoyed the original movie starring Bale, it’s not one of my favorites and is something I have no desire to revisit. The book is even further down that list. Still, I love Guadagnino and I love Butler, so I quickly accepted the idea and prepared myself to enjoy it. According to the book’s author, I went through that process too quickly.

Bret Easton Ellis recently revealed on his podcast that the announcement is not all it’s cracked up to be. “I have a feeling it’s fake news. I heard somewhere, from someone, that there are no contracts,” Ellis explained. “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 … 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.”

Announcing a team to see if people bite is bleak but feels par for the current course. Warner Brothers has been trying a similar tactic with the new Harry Potter show. To support Ellis’s claim, most of the reporting on the initial announcement notes that Guadagnino was “in talks” for the project. That doesn’t one hundred percent mean he hadn’t signed anything already, but it doesn’t mean he did either. But, people were excited about the pairing (as they should have been) and ran with it.

Time will tell if we get to see this film brought to life. I know I will have a ticket in my hand if it does. That said, I’d be more excited if Luca gets to do his weird DC Comics war movie, and that’s a property I am excited about.