Duncan Sheik Scoring American Psycho Musical

Published by Jeff Leins on: February 3rd, 2010

Satirical novel and psychological thriller American Psycho is being adapted into a musical with songs from Duncan Sheik and a book by “Big Love” writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, reports Variety.

Movies becoming musicals are more common than you might think.  American Psycho will join the ranks of other transfers, including The Lion King, Legally Blonde, The Lord of the Rings (really), Billy Elliot, Young Frankenstein, Xanadu, The Little Mermaid, High Fidelity, The Wedding Singer, When Harry Met Sally, and the struggling stage version of Spider-Man.  Just to name a few I found on the Internet and had no prior knowledge of until today…

Duncan Sheik though?  Well, the same one hit wonder that sang “Barely Breathing” in 1998 has graduated to writing music for stage shows.  He even won a Tony award for the music to Broadway’s “Spring Awakening,” which reportedly took him eight years to craft.

How long will it take him to write out 80’s music references like Phil Collins and the swinging sounds of “Hip to Be Square” playing over an axe-swinging murderer?  How different will the musical be from the 2000 film and from the original novel by Bret Easton Ellis?  How much of Christian Bale’s performance and Tom Cruise impersonation will remain?  Will the new Patrick Bateman utter the phrase “don’t just stare at it, eat it?”

These are questions for another day when and if “American Psycho: The Musical” ever opens on stage.  It was announced in September 2008, so there’s apparently no hurry.  As an adoring fan of the Mary Harron film, I’ll be keeping tabs on this strange mash-up.

Side note: If you ever wanted to connect the dots between THE Duncan Sheik and Terminator Salvation director McG, the latter is developing a movie version of Spring Awakening.