Will Natalie Portman Star in Danielle Ganek’s ‘Lulu’?

Danielle Ganek’s been having a good week. Yesterday Daily Intel reported that the former magazine editor had an unexpected guest (cough, Bloomberg, cough!) at the launch party for her debut novel, Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him. (If that title rings a bell, it’s because we mentioned Ganek in our recent list of hedge-fund wives.) The buzzy book, a send-up of the contemporary-art world, has been compared to The Devil Wears Prada, and even the gallery girls (a.k.a. “gallerinas�) sound rather familiar: “We’re considered a loathsome breed,� says narrator Mia McMurray, “Aren’t we represented almost universally as obnoxious, entitled, pretty girls in great clothes?� Naturally, we wondered if we might one day see Lulu on the big screen as well. We called Ganek at home — maybe you know the address? — and asked for the scoop (or as Mia’s boss, Simon Pryce, would say, “the poop�).

“Yeah, the book is out in Hollywood,� Ganek told us. “So far no deals have been made, but the people are in talks with the people. Maybe soon.� If the book gets optioned, who would be in her ideal cast? “I love the idea of somebody like Natalie Portman in the Mia role. And then whoever is the most beautiful, gorgeous, hot blonde — I don’t know, maybe Sienna Miller — just the stunning “It�-girl type of actress that you’re fascinated by for Lulu. For Simon, somebody suggested Rupert Everett, and I think that would be a great idea.� Ganek insists, however, that these characters are not based on real people in the New York art world, despite some speculation that Lulu’s Greenwich art collector Martin Better was inspired by Larry Gagosian. “In the art world, maybe more than anywhere else, they completely understand what it is to create a fiction and create a universe,� she says. “So far no one has claimed to be the rather overly pretentious Simon Pryce or the small, uncircumcised Peter LeReine.� We wonder why. —Lori Fradkin