Muse lines up slate of hot literary adaptations

Chris Hanley of prolific US production outfit Muse Productions and Jordan Gertner of sister financing company Hero are in Cannes talking up a slate that includes films of novels An Expensive Education by Nick McDonell, Lunar Park by Brett Easton Ellis, The Shakespeare Riots by Nigel Cliff and London Fields by Martin Amis.

In addition, Hanley and Gertner are close to attaching a director to the original Brett Easton Ellis script Golden Suicides on which Muse is partnered with PalmStar Entertainment. Gaspar Noe is one of the film-makers mulling about taking on the film.

Hanley’s credits include Buffalo 66, Two Girls And A Guy, The Virgin Suicides, American Psycho, Bully and The Killer Inside Me. Hero was created solely to invest in films, and The Killer Inside Me and 360 are the first two beneficiaries.

Monster’s Ball and Birth screenwriter Milo Addica has written the script for An Expensive Education about a rogue US operation against a Somalian freedom fighter. McDonell also wrote the book of 12 which was made into a film by Joel Schumacher.

Muse is searching for directors on Lunar Park and London Fields, which has had Michael Winterbottom and David Cronenberg attached.

Cliff is adapting his own novel The Shakespeare Riots about the rivalry between two actors in 1849 New York City, one an intellectual Englishman and one a working class American bodybuilder.

Muse was a co-producer on Fernando Meireilles’ 360 starring Anthony Hopkins, Rachel Weisz and Jude Law which has just wrapped, and will go into production early next month on Nick Cassavetes’ Yellow, co-written by and starring Cassavetes’ wife Heather Wahlquist and shooting Oklahoma. Ben Foster, Sienna Miller, Luke Wilson, Lucy Punch and the director’s mother Gena Rowlands co-star. Hanley describes the film as “A Beautiful Mind on acid.” Wild Bunch is handling sales on both 360 and Yellow.

On July 17, production is scheduled to begin on Matthew Wilder’s Inferno starring Malin Akerman as Linda Lovelace with Matt Dillon in talks to play Lovelace’s husband Chuck Traynor. No sales agent is yet attached