Will Ryan Murphy Rescue Bret Easton Ellis From HBO Hell? 

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Now that Ryan Murphy is finished dramatizing Truman Capote’s checkered historical past, the at all times edgy producer seems to be transferring on to a different literary unhealthy boy. Rambling Reporter has discovered that Murphy, 59, is in discussions to provide a series-length adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ The Shards, the 2023 semi-autobiographical novel full of medicine, angst and homicide, loosely based mostly on the writer’s teen years at The Buckley College in Sherman Oaks. The property, a prequel of kinds to Much less Than Zero, Ellis’ 1985 best-seller about moody 20-somethings in L.A. throughout the early Reagan period, had been chugging towards manufacturing at HBO since January 2024. Norwegian auteur Kristoffer Borgli had reportedly been signed to direct, and Jacob Elordi, the Australian actor from Saltburn, was mentioned to be circling to star. However then, in September, all of it blew up over artistic variations. “I actually felt like eight months of the yr had been wasted,” Ellis, 60, instructed a film weblog in January, complaining about how “irritating” the event course of had been at Warner Bros. and vowing to scrub his palms of any future adaptation of the e book. “I mentioned, ‘By no means once more; I’m by no means going to do that once more.’ ” However with Murphy now using excessive, Ellis might need to rethink that promise. Murphy’s FX collection Feud: Capote vs. The Swans has been an awards contender all yr (5 Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nom), as has his newest season of Netflix’s true-crime collection Monster, which, come to think about it, additionally focuses on Much less Than Zero-like disaffected youth rising up in L.A. within the ’80s (you already know, the Menendez brothers). One insider says the deal is all however closed, whereas one other knowledgable supply tells THR, “There have been discussions however nothing agency.” Fingers crossed.

The Trump Bump for E-book Gross sales: It’s Positively Orwellian

In a month that noticed apocalyptic fires in Los Angeles and unconstitutional authoritarian chaos in Washington, Individuals have been stress-free with … dystopian fiction about apocalyptic fires and authoritarian governments. Bookscan, which covers about 85 % of all e book purchases within the U.S., reported that gross sales of Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel about e book burning, rose 150 % to land because the No. 8 best-selling e book within the nation, whereas 1984, the basic George Orwell story about authoritarian regimes manipulating the reality, landed at No. 10 after gross sales jumped 192 %. Simply lacking the highest 10 minimize had been Octavia Butler’s novel of apocalyptic local weather change, The Parable of the Sower; Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Story; and Orwell’s Animal Farm. Alex Woloch, an Orwell scholar at Stanford, says an identical leap occurred after Donald Trump’s first inauguration, when Kellyanne Conway’s declaration that Trump’s misrepresentations had been simply “various details” despatched 1984 to No. 1 on Bookscan. He believes individuals hold returning to those tales as a result of they supply a “reassuring ethical readability” about what they’re witnessing. “To learn 1984, or The Handmaid’s Story, is to really feel a transparent, unified and authoritative perspective on the occasions described, which is in stark distinction to the disorientation of politics, and the protection of politics, in the meanwhile,” he says. Nonetheless, such bumps are sometimes ephemeral. By the next week, the best-seller checklist was again to 4 books by Rebecca Yarros, two from Freida McFadden, a few self-help tomes and the most recent within the canine cop collection Canine Man. — Andy Lewis

Man Pearce’s Professional-Palestinian Pin Downside Isn’t Going Away 

This yr’s Oscars can have at the very least one assured second of fingernail-biting suspense: when Man Pearce reveals up on the pink carpet. Will the 57-year-old Australian actor be sporting his controversial pro-Palestinian lapel jewellery, or gained’t he? His tiny brooches have been making huge waves all awards season, with Pearce donning the divisive trinkets as he’s been selling The Brutalist, the post-Holocaust drama by which he has an Oscar-nominated supporting function as an antisemitic American industrialist. The pin first popped up on Pearce’s chest on the Cannes Movie Pageant in Might, setting off a mini scandal when Vainness Truthful France airbrushed it out of images of the actor, presumably fearing the journal’s readers would discover it offensive. Pearce was so infuriated by the edit — “A shame,” he referred to as it — he dashed off an indignant e mail to CNN. “Because the Palestinian persons are already struggling nice trauma and loss because of the vengeful regime of Netanyahu,” he wrote, “it’s most unlucky {that a} respected publication like VF makes an attempt to get rid of assist that I or anybody chooses to supply.” Months later, on the Golden Globes, Pearce was nonetheless pinning himself to the trigger, sporting an “Artist4Ceasefire” bauble on his lapel, which sparked predictable on-line outrage (“He’s … taking part in an antisemite, which makes you marvel if he thinks he’s truly the hero of the movie,” posted one wag). Even after the Gaza ceasefire started in January, Pearce continued to embellish his jackets with “Free Palestine” buttons, together with at The Brutalist’s London premiere (the place he instructed Sky Information that “fortunately all these individuals in Gaza can return to their properties and stay freely like they did on October the sixth”) and on the AACTA Awards in Australia (which Pearce attended on Feb. 7 as a substitute of the Critics Selection Awards in Hollywood). Pearce’s reps didn’t reply to requests for remark, however sources inform Rambling Reporter that the actor does certainly intend to pin “one thing” on his jacket on the Oscars. — Merle Ginsberg

This story appeared within the Feb. 12 difficulty of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.