Austin Butler spent most of his year working, a trend that is not stopping going into 2025. A thing he has in common with Glen Powell is that he keeps booking more work, to the extent that I’m starting to wonder which of his upcoming projects he’ll end up dropping because he can’t work out the scheduling.
Presumed for next year, Butler has Ari Aster’s Eddington and Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing; there are persistent rumors he’ll star in Heat 2 for Michael Mann, playing the role once played by Val Kilmer (GOOD casting call, if true, they’re cut from the same cloth as actors); and he’s got a potential franchise with Don Winslow’s City on Fire. There is also a racing movie co-starring Tom Holland on the docket, and there’s a time-travel film with Conclave director Edward Berger. But wait, that’s not all, because Butler was just announced to star in Luca Guadagnino’s new adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho.
Does there need to be a new version of American Psycho, when Mary Harron already knocked it out of the park, and Christian Bale’s performance as Patrick Bateman is so iconic? Maybe not, but on the other hand, Luca Guadagnino has earned some leeway, and if he wants to tackle American Psycho, then let him. Let’s see what he can do. Harron turned it into a horror-satire of Eighties Yuppie culture and what we now call toxic masculinity. When Guadagnino has leaned into horror, as with Suspiria—also a remake no one thought we needed that he did something interesting with—and Bones and All, he has focused on culty, anti-social behavior. I can see that working well for American Psycho, especially in the age of crypto bros.
If it were any other filmmaker, I might be more hesitant, but Guadagnino deserves the benefit of the doubt, especially since he cast Butler over the other actor rumored to be up for the role—Jacob Elordi. I can see why someone would put Jacob Elordi and Patrick Bateman together, but Austin Butler is a better actor, who is increasingly revealing himself to be the kind of actor that can play it straight down the middle, but who also seems to like going off the deep end a little bit. Let him go off the deep end as Patrick Bateman! I kinda want to see what he does with the role. And I want to see what Luca Guadagnino sees in the material that he can’t resist. There must be something, aren’t you a little curious what it is?
