Paul Schrader Signs On to Direct Bret Easton Ellis’s Screenplay About Sharks, Rich People

Easton Ellis

Back in December, Bret Easton Ellis’s screenplay about sharks looked like it might finally become a real movie. As of yesterday, the outlook is even more positive! Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, among other credits, has signed on to direct the film, which is now called Bait. Schrader will work with Ellis on a new draft of the screenplay, with hopes that shooting can begin in November. The movie has always contained sharks, but in previous iterations, it seemed to involve hostages too. (Ones who would be fed to the sharks, naturally.) Now it’s being described as a horror-thriller about a young man “who works at a posh beach club, angles his way on to a yacht filled with the obnoxious elite, commandeering it into waters filled with the finned man-eaters.” A young man with class anxiety manifesting itself in extremely bloody ways: sounds like a Bret Easton Ellis yarn! If the sharks don’t do the trick, Patrick Bateman can always pop by to lend the lead a chainsaw. [THR]

Paul Schrader Signs On to Direct Bret Easton Ellis’s Screenplay About Sharks, Rich People