tv adaptations

Hulu Is Making a Less Than Zero Series, and Your Ex-Boyfriend Is Thrilled

Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

If you hadn’t talked about it enough with that ex-boyfriend you hope you don’t run into at parties, you may now be able to reimmerse yourself in Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis. Variety reports that Hulu has optioned it as a series, and while there’s no green light for an episode order yet, the project is in development. The book was previously adapted into a movie starring Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz, and Robert Downey Jr. in 1987, with McCarthy starring as the college boy who visits home in Los Angeles after a semester away at school to find his ex-girlfriend dating his close friend, and both are nurturing savage drug addictions. It’s like a worst-case version of 1980s L.A. that unloads all the stereotypes of neon-soaked, privilege-powered debauchery in a Reagan-era City of Angels.

As Variety reports, “The series is described as a look at the culture of wealthy, decadent youth in Los Angeles,” and if it goes through, it will be the first series treatment for a book by Ellis. Your ex-boyfriend is stoked, and hoping that the rest of his bookshelf — including but not limited to Atlas Shrugged, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and Fight Club — can get the serial treatment he knows it deserves.

Tell Your Ex-Boyfriend: Hulu to Make Less Than Zero Series