After more than two decades since its cinematic release, American Psycho, the cult-hit film that brought Bret Easton Ellis’s horror novel to the big-screen, is getting a new lease of life. It is said that the film, which will revolve around a script by Scott Z. Burns (Contagion; The Report) will not be a like-for-like remake – instead, it’ll be a fresh re-imagining of Ellis’s work. It’s also been confirmed that Luca Guadagnino, the director responsible for Call Me By Your Name and Challengers, will be behind the camera. No announcement, however, has been made about who will play the anti-hero, Patrick Bateman, a fictional killer brought into pop culture via Christian Bale’s wild, nightmarish portrayal.
Here, we examine a slew of actors who would do a fine job of slipping on the power suits and see-through raincoat.
Timothée Chalamet
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Even though he’s taken on several roles that are imbued with a youthful sense of abandon and naivety (Lady Bird; Wonka), Chalamet has an ability to show off a more sombre tone: it’s evident in his role as a cannibal in Bones and All; he has a deeper feel when portraying a young adult grappling with addiction in Beautiful Boy; and there’s a touch of menace in him following his one-on-one combat with Austin Butler in Dune: Part Two. Moreover, the charm and boyish appearance would help cover up the pitch-black undertone; he’s already worked with Guadagnino; and his star power would attract a new generation to the title.
Jacob Elordi
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Perhaps the front-runner here, Elordi was reported to have de-activated his Instagram account shortly after the film’s announcement – this move, some have said, is likely due to him being handed the lead. As Nate Jacobs in Euphoria, he comes off as an emotionally detached, manipulative figure; in Saltburn, he pulls off the handsome rich-kid character – two styles, it must be pointed out, that Bale successfully dovetails in his depiction.
Steven Yeun
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The Beef co-lead is one of the leading lights among the current generation of actors – and though The Walking Dead, Minari and Nope may be the projects he’s best known for, his masterstroke could be in Burning, the gritty 2018 psycho-thriller in which he plays Ben, an enigmatic, affluent figure who, every two months, sets fire to an abandoned greenhouse.
Barry Keoghan
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Did you catch the final moments of The Batman? Keoghan’s brief appearance as The Joker was a fantastic blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment for DC fans, and it also gave the audience a pretty convincing taste of the actor’s more sinister side, even if just for a split second. Also, in The Banshees of Inisherin, he has viewers constantly second-guessing as he does a wonderful job of depicting a lonely, lost soul (albeit a different one from Bateman). It must also be said that, thanks to Saltburn, we know BK doesn’t shy away from doing some very dicey moves.
Austin Butler
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We feel that Butler was massively let down by the Dune: Part Two script. His intense, unhinged Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen was slated to be the next coming of Heath Ledger’s Joker in terms of masterly performance, but limited screen time and a pretty limp arc left things on a flat note. But Butler definitely has the evil chops (he’s also one of the intruders at the end of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood; and, generally speaking, you wouldn’t trust many of his characters to set foot inside your front door) – and Patrick Bateman feels like a role Butler would go full-on method for.
Bill Skarsgård
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Well, have you seen him as Pennywise… ?
Want more film speculation? We debate who’ll play the next James Bond…
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