Bret Easton Ellis has had a pretty good run in film adaptations, with both Mary Harron's American Psycho and Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction jumping off the page in style and, especially in the case of the former, with healthy box-office returns. But the latest adaptation, The Informers, directed by Gregor Jordan, seems to be suffering in comparison: critics at the Sundance film festival emerged from the first screening apparently bamboozled by what Cinematical.com called "a jumbled mass of unrelated subplots".
Slash Film was even more scathing, boiling its verdict down to a 15-word review: "Spoiled Rich kids. Drugs. Sex. Amber Heard naked. Aids. Infidelity. Kidnapping. Unconnected. Boring. Uninteresting. Horrible."
An Education, billed as the pick of the record 12 feature-length British films to be screened at this year's festival, did rather better and has been snapped up by Sony in a deal purportedly close to $3m (£2.18m) following a bidding war with Fox Searchlight. Based on a screenplay by Nick Hornby, the drama stars Carey Mulligan as a suburban teenager seduced by Peter Sarsgaard's older man in 60s London.
Fox did later pounce, however, picking up the in-competition New York romance Adam for less than $1m, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Starring Rose Byrne and Hugh Dancy, the film concerns the blossoming relationship between a young man with Asperger's syndrome and his upstairs neighbour.
Meanwhile, Lionsgate bought The Winning Season, James Strouse's comedy about a high-school girls' basketball team, starring Sam Rockwell as an alcoholic coach. Another Rockwell film, the sci-fi flick Moon, is also attracting plenty of buzz. Directed by Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie, it sees Rockwell as an astronaut who begins to hear and see things towards the end of his lonely three-year mission. However, it's worth remembering that both Rockwell's Sundance film in 2006 (Snow Angels) and Strouse's (Grace Is Gone) never made it as far as the UK.
For the large part, however, the industry tradepapers report that buyers are keeping a tight hold on their wallets this year as Hollywood prepares for recession. One film which could attract a decent fee is the Jim Carrey/Ewan McGregor comedy I Love You Phillip Morris, the real-life tale of a married family man who escaped from prison four times to try and locate a former inmate with whom he had fallen in love. So far, however, no one is biting, although Summit Entertainment is said to be giving producers the glad eye.
