Bret Easton Ellis’ The Shards is headed to the small screen with Kaia Gerber on board to star, Deadline reports.
Ellis’ novel, published in 2023 by Knopf, follows a character named Bret Ellis, a 17-year-old prep school senior who becomes obsessed with a mysterious new student and starts to suspect that he might have a connection with a serial killer. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a surprisingly seductive work of erotic horror.”
There is no word yet on what character Gerber, the actor known for her roles in the films Bottoms, Saturday Night, and Shell, will be playing in the series.
The show will be developed by Ryan Murphy, the creator of series including Nip/Tuck, Glee, and Pose. Gerber previously worked with Murphy on the series American Horror Story: Double Feature and American Horror Stories. Max Winkler, who directed episodes of those two series, will helm the Shards adaptation. Murphy, Ellis, and Winkler will be among the adaptation’s executive producers.
Ellis’ novels have been adapted for the screen before. His first book, Less Than Zero, formed the basis for a 1987 film starring Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz, and Robert Downey Jr., while his second, The Rules of Attraction, was adapted into a 2002 film with James Van Der Beek, Ian Somerhalder, and Jessica Biel.
His controversial novel American Psycho was memorably adapted by Mary Harron into a movie with Christian Bale as the lead character. A new adaptation of the novel is in the works from director Luca Guadagnino with Austin Butler set to star.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
