According to Variety, streaming service Hulu is in development on a TV adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel Less Than Zero, with Greenleaf creator Craig Wright writing and executive producing alongside Ellis.
Here’s the official description of the novel:
Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980’s, this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age, in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money a place devoid of feeling or hope.
Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay’s holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.
Less Than Zero was previously adapted for the big screen in 1987, with Andrew McCarthy starring as Clay alongside Jami Gertz, Robert Downey, Jr. and James Spader. The film received mixed reviews, while Ellis was hugely critical of it upon release, but later said that he “really warmed up to it”, despite it bearing little resemblance to his novel.
Originally published May 1, 2018. Updated April 30, 2018.
