If you’re lucky enough to grow old, eventually you’ll see everything you loved remade or rebooted. It’s the real circle of life. And at the tail-end of 2024, it was finally announced that Luca Guadagnino would be turning his hand to a new version of American Psycho, the controversial thriller from Bret Easton Ellis that ranks alongside Fight Club as the most discourse-inspiring movies of all time. Given the way the world has swerved in the last decade, a new take on the book is arguably coming at the perfect time.
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That said, Christian Bale’s American Psycho remains an excellent adaptation with a startlingly good lead performance by the future Oscar-winner (who only got the role when Leonardo DiCaprio passed). The new version will apparently replace Bale with Austin Butler, in similarly inspired casting, but both he and Guadagnino have a big challenge ahead of them: convincing anyone that we need a new adaptation. And now, one of the original movie’s cast has broken his silence on the remake and its biggest challenge: Justin Theroux, who played Patrick Bateman’s colleague Timothy Bryce, questions whether we need a remake:
“I don’t know… A straight remake, I think what’s the point? They have a pretty good group coming together for that, so I’m in support of it, in theory.”
Justin Theroux Says American Psycho Was Misunderstood
Part of the challenge of making American Psycho in 2026 is the issue of reclamation: like Fight Club, the movie has, for some reason, been almost wilfully misunderstood. Rather than a monstrous horror figure, Patrick Bateman has become almost an idol, in the same way that Gordon Gekko of Wall Street seems to have become an aspiratonal figure. Theroux, who spoke to ComicBook in the wake of Fallout Season 2’s finale, agrees:
“The one thing I’ve learned about that movie in general is – I’ll tell you this – I see a lot of frat boys on Halloween dressed up as Patrick Bateman, just missing the point entirely, you know? I mean, this sort of Patrick Bateman chic has become… it’s sort of like people that misinterpret Archie Bunker, you’re like, we need to get back to that, and you’re like, no, Archie Bunker was lovable, but he was the bad guy! He was written, you know, as satire.”
Archie Bunker was the bigoted patriarch of All in the Family, who some sections of the Internet community might now say represented “old American ways”, rather than being an outright stereotype of racists. He was actually part of the blueprint that built South Park‘s Eric Cartman years later. Theroux went on to talk more about how the perception of Bateman, and Bunker, would present a challenge to the new remake of American Psycho that must be headed off with a new layer of updated satire:
“American Psycho and Archie Bunker and Fallout for that matter are arguably all satire, And so, I continue to be shocked that that character has evolved in a way that has been used to prop up sort of the frat bro, finance bro, macho, you know, way of life. Or as something that wants to be emulated. So I don’t know. I just hope that script comes in very sharp and with very pointy elbows, and is disruptive, as opposed to just being a remake. I don’t think there’s any point in remaking it, just if you’re sort of doing the same storyline. I hope they elaborate on it.”
Fingers crossed the team deliver. What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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Courtesy of Bones Film
