Duncan Sheik, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to Write American Psycho Musical

Duncan Sheik will write music and lyrics and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa will pen the book for a musical version of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. A timeline, along with casting and a creative team, for the project will be announced at a later date.

Ellis’ 1991 novel centers on a Wall Street banker who is also a serial killer. The book incorporates multiple references to the popular music of the 1980s, the era in which the story is set, and it is expected that Sheik’s original songs will reflect the period in a production that will also use hits from the era.

Sheik won a Tony Award for the score for Spring Awakening. His new musical Whisper House recently opened at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. His musical Nero received a developmental staging at New York Stage and Film in Poughkeepsie in 2008.

Aguirre-Sacasa, a writer on the HBO series Big Love, has written such plays as Based on a Totally True Story, Good Boys and True, and Dark Matters.