Hulu is Developing Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero

Hulu is developing a TV adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero

Hulu has announced it is developing Less Than Zero, based on Bret Easton Ellis’ 1985 novel of the same name.  Ellis, writer Craig Wright (Greenleaf), and Fox 21 Television Studios have paired up to bring this adaptation to life.  Ellis and Wright will executive produce the series. 

Less Than Zero is officially described as follows:

Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980’s, Less than Zero has become a timeless classic.  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.  They live in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money in 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. 

Ellis wrote a sequel to the book, Imperial Bedrooms, which was published in 2010. 

Less Than Zero was previously adapted as a 1987 movie starring Robert Downey Jr., James Spader, Jami Gertz and Andrew McCarthy.  Ellis co-wrote the film with Harley Peyton. 

Ellis’ books previously made into movies also include American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction, and The Informers.