Bret Easton Ellis is making his debut as a film director, Variety reports.
The novelist is set to helm Relapse, which he also wrote. The film will follow a character named Matt Cullen, who enters a rehabilitation program after a party that goes horribly wrong and who’s revisited by a monster that haunted him as a teen.
Joseph Quinn, the actor known for his roles in the series Stranger Things, Dickensian, and Strike, will play Cullen in the film.
Ellis made his literary debut at 21 with the novel Less Than Zero, which he followed up two years later with The Rules of Attraction. His third novel, American Psycho, was one of the most controversial novels of the 1990s; its violent scenes of torture and murder drew protests from readers who criticized the book as misogynistic.
His novels have formed the basis for several films. Less Than Zero was adapted for a 1987 film starring Andrew McCarthy and Robert Downey Jr., while The Rules of Attraction inspired a 2002 movie with James Van Der Beek and Shannyn Sossamon. In 2000, Mary Harron directed a film adaptation of American Psycho starring Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, and Jared Leto; it quickly became a cult hit.
Ellis said Relapse will be “a fun, lush and commercial feature film for a lot of people to enjoy.”
“I grew up watching the iconic horror movies of the 1970s,” he said. “I’ve written Lunar Park, a horror novel, as an homage to Stephen King. It seems appropriate that my first feature would be a horror film. There is a simplicity to Relapse that seems like the perfect form for my directing debut: something direct and impactful.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
