I'm a big fan of author Bret Easton Ellis' work. Since many of his novels rely on the inner workings of characters' minds, they can be difficult to adapt to the big screen. The film version of Less Than Zero made cocaine addiction look like Pretty in Pink. I know I'm in the minority, but I detested Mary Harron's American Psycho. The only adaptation I feel got Ellis exactly right was Roger Avary's excellent take on The Rules of Attraction. Now three more films are going to try and re-create Ellis' world. Darren Star is working on The Frog King with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There is no director yet, but a movie version of Lunar Park has been announced. And director Gregor Jordan (Ned Kelly) has put together a cast for the film translation of Ellis' 1995 novel The Informers.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, and Superman himself Brandon Routh are in "various stages of negotiation" to star in the ensemble film. The Informers is set in Los Angeles in 1983 and it tracks seven stories. The major characters are: a movie executive (played by Thornton), his wife (Basinger), his mistress, a rock star, a kidnapper, and a vampire (Routh, apparently looking to darken up his image). Rounding out the cast are Ashley Olsen as a "sexually promiscuous girl" (doesn't it seem like those twins are getting a ton of work these days?), Jon Foster (Stay Alive), Austin Nichols (John Monad on the baffling John From Cincinnati), and Lou Taylor Pucci (star of the very good Thumbsucker and the not very good Chumscrubber -- yes, they're different movies). Sounds like it could be a great flick! Now, whatever happened to Roger Avary's planned Glamorama movie? I would love to see that come to light. Did Zoolander steal its thunder?

A London-based charity called ARK recently held a big dinner, where Prince, Madonna and Bill Clinton showed up, and they auctioned off a bunch of prizes, one of which caught my eye - a "day on the next James Bond film set with actor Daniel Craig." I've been trying to get some further detail on this, but there's very practically no information available. (Another prize auctioned off included dinner with Mikhail Gorbachev.) Somehow I doubt that the prize-winner will end up lounging on a beach chair, watching as Daniel Craig films his love scenes with Carice van Houten (cross your fingers) but will instead be sort of hustled in and out in the space of a half-hour. Cinematical recently sent one of our people to the set of a major upcoming thriller and the person ended up watching an actor open and close a cab door for a million takes. It's a tough business, folks. The fact that the prize specifically says "with actor Daniel Craig" implies there will be a quick meet-and-greet and that will pretty much be it.

On a separate Bond note, the Bond girl rumors have now officially gone overboard, with some gossip rags reporting that Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are being courted to play 'good Bond girl twins' in Bond 22. Even in the homestretch of Pierce Brosnan's Bond run, when there were was an invisible car, a villain trying to take over the world with giant ant-burning magnifying glass and a machine that could change a person's race, no one would have dared suggest something so over-the-top as casting the Olsens. It's just not happening. So let's all go back to waiting for the official announcement of Carice van Houten's casting, which will hopefully be coming very soon.