Benecio Del Toro As Bret Easton Ellis!?

So, there still isn't a director attached to the film version of Lunar Park, but Bret says that Benecio Del Toro has the inside track on the lead role.

According to Easton Ellis, it was their physical differences that attracted the "Traffic" star to the role. "I think he's interested just because he's rarely offered Anglo parts. I think that's one of the reasons it was very exciting [to him]," explained the writer.

"I don't even think he read the book; I just think he read the script and said 'Oh, this is an Anglo writer and you're not casting a white dude? You've come to me?' And I think that rarely happens for him. I think he's offered a lot of Spanish characters and ethnic types, and I think it's very rare for him to get offered Anglo parts."

I've always thought that if they did it soon, and he lost some weight, Jon Favreau would be a good pick.

Lunar Park Screenplay

Some movement on the Lunar Park movie front. PalmStar put an update out - apparently in October (how did this not hit their RSS feed?) - that names Lane Shadgett as the screenplay writer. (UPDATE: The PalmStar RSS feed apparently died on September 27th)

Lane is a complete unknown to me. His only other writing credit on IMDB is for All Lost Souls which is still in production.

There also may or may not be a director attached. Glad to see the project is progressing.

More Interest In Lunar Park

Variety has a bit of Lunar Park film gossip in a story about the opening of Denzel Washington's Deja Vu. Apparently Adam Goldberg is in negotiations with Ellis to get the rights to make a Lunar Park film and Val Kilmer may end up with the lead role.

This is a bit strange, since last we heard, Palm Star had the movie rights and it looks like they still have Lunar Park as an active project.

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Lunar Park Movie Trailer

Lunar Park Teaser Trailer at YouTube!

I'm not sure how legit it is, and I don't really care - because its neat regardless. Seven more screencaps after the jump.

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Online Chat With BEE

21st Century Lit has a transcript from a recent online chat with some college newspaper editors. Its a pretty long chat, but I did find it interesting that Ellis still says that Glamorama is his favorite novel. Usually, writers fall in love with whatever their most recent work is - especially when they are still trying to sell copies of it.

Ellis Interview

The Morning News has an interview up with Bret by Robert Birnbaum. Robert has chatted with Bret a few times over the past couple of years, so his interview is quite different than most folks because he doesn't have to ask the obvious questions. [Thanks to Tim and Settemod for sending this in]

The only real future project nugget is Bret's response when asked about The Informers:

BEE: And that has a script and looks like it's going to go, yeah.

This would be the Nicholas Jarecki script mentioned last year, so hopefully its still progressing.

Palm-Star Options Lunar Park

News has finally come out on who bought the film rights to Lunar Park - its Palm-Star Entertainment.

"We believed in Lunar Park so strongly that we put in a pre-emptive bid the very next day after it came to us", said Kevin Frakes, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Palm-Star Entertainment. "We were in a bit of a battle, but it was personal for our company and we went the extra mile to close the deal". Palm-Star has been fielding interest from producers, directors and writers, but are taking their time in packaging the project.

"Lunar Park is the most personal book I've written even if on the surface it reads like a thriller. It took a long time to complete and Palm-Star has known about the book from the beginning. And they witnessed the usual complaints, anxieties, and excitement that occur when you're completing a novel." Concedes author Bret Easton Ellis. "Now it's their turn to move through that process."

Lunar Park Movie Rights Acquired

The movie rights to Lunar Park have been sold. At this point, I'm creating a Lunar Park Movie category for the site.

Previous discussion here and here.

Lunar Park, The Movie

2 weeks ago, I mentioned that Bret had talked about who would play him in the movie version of Lunar Park if it were ever made into a film. His answer, though playful, seemed serious enough at the time that it made me think it may be a real possibility of this book being made into a film.

Well, today that is apparently 1 step closer to reality as a legitimate offer has been made to Ellis for the movie rights to Lunar Park. Hopefully, more will be known within the next couple of days/weeks as to who made the offer and what type of film they are wanting to make from this novel. Hopefully, they are looking at this as a movie about Bret Easton Ellis with a horror backdrop rather than as a straight horror flick with Ellis as just another character.

Lunar Park, The Movie?

The Washington Square News has an interview with Ellis. When asked who he'd like to play the role of Bret Easton Ellis if Lunar Park were ever adapted for film, Bret had this to say:

I'd give it Jake Gyllenhaal - no, I'm kidding. They've offered it to all the actors my age. They offered it to Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp. And everyone turned it down. The only person who didn't was Benicio del Toro, who actually began running around the studios saying, "I wanna star in this."

Not sure if thats all in jest or not. I haven't heard anything about the book being optioned for film yet.