Continuing the recent trend of announced Broadway shows based on batshit insane, hilariously incongruous source material, ambitious producers have today declared intentions to adapt Bret Easton Ellis’s yuppie-serial-killer classic American Psycho to the musical stage. Though no directors, book writers, songwriters, or music publishers have yet signed on, American Psycho: The Musical! will supposedly hit in 2010 and feature original eighties-inspired songs as well as covers of Huey Lewis, Genesis, and Talking Heads tracks mentioned in the novel.
But in a world that already has in-the-works operas based on An Inconvenient Truth and Brokeback Mountain, plus an apparently bad (but still kinda awesome-looking) one inspired by The Fly, and allegedly Broadway-bound shows about Spider-Man and Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, how far do producers honestly expect they can stretch the dollars of inane-spectacle-appreciating theater fans? Surely there can’t be that many of us! The only thing as sure as next week’s announcement of Pasolini’s Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma: The Musical! is that most of these shows will lose somebody a lot of money. (Admittedly, though, we’re totally going to see all of them.)