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You wouldn’t normally expect Hollywood to be able to create a convincing criticism of the elites, any more than you would trust Jeffrey Epstein to create a comprehensive childcare plan. This might explain why the original Bonfire Of The Vanities adaptation failed.
This high-profile 1990 adaptation starred Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, Kim Cattrall, Morgan Freeman, and an uncredited F. Murray Abraham was both a critical and commercial bomb.
It cost an estimated US$47 million to make, but initially grossed just over US$15 million at the US box office. Critical reception was savage, and it still only holds a 15% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus summary is damning:
“The Bonfire of the Vanities is a vapid adaptation of a thoughtful book, fatally miscast and shorn of the source material’s crucial sense of irony. Add it to the pyre of Hollywood’s ambitious failures.”
Now Hollywood is to have another try. A report in Variety says that The Batman and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes filmmaker Matt Reeves will roll straight off adventures in Gotham City and onto an eight-episode series adaptation of the famed Tom Wolfe novel for Apple TV.
Published in 1987, Bonfire Of The Vanities is a satire on New York society and deals with ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in the 1980s. It primarily focuses on white yuppie Wall Street bond trader Sherman McCoy, whose life falls apart after a hit-and-run incident with a young black man in the Bronx while his mistress was driving the car.
The book was created against the backdrop of America’s ongoing struggles with race, which was juxtaposed against the success of 1980s Wall Street. Away from high finance, the city was a hotbed of racial and cultural tension, polarized by several high-profile incidents tagged as racism, particularly the murders in white neighborhoods of two black men, Willie Turks and Michael Griffith, in separate incidents.
Meanwhile, Bernhard Goetz became something of a folk hero in the city for shooting a group of young black men who tried to rob him in the subway in 1984.
This adaptation will be executive-produced by Boston Legal and Big Little Lies creator David E. Kelley, who has been working with Apple TV on Presumed Innocent and Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
Reeves is also an executive producer via his 6th and Idaho Productions label, with Sarah Geismer and Matthew Tinker executive producing for Warner Bros. Television.
The post Reeves For BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.
