To Die For: Kunis Tops 'American Psycho II'

12 Apr, 2001 By: Staff Reporter

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Mila Kunis (Get Over It) will topline American Psycho II, the sequel to last year's American Psycho, for Lions Gate Prods. and director Morgan J. Freeman (Hurricane Streets).

A sequel was expected. Last month, Lions Gate said it was "sorting through existing scripts at the company" to mold a Psycho follow-up.

Psycho II is slated to go before cameras in mid-May in Toronto from a script being written by Karen Craig and Alex Sanger. Lions Gate says it will complete the film before time runs out on contract negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild on June 30. The film, which will be sold at the upcoming Cannes International Film Festival, is budgeted at nearly $10 million, sources say.

The sequel is being produced by original "Psycho" co-producer Ernie Barbarash, with Sanger overseeing the project for Lions Gate.

The sequel to Psycho -- the big-screen adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 novel following yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman -- will star Kunis as a college freshman who survived an attack by Bateman. After developing a dark obsession to join a professor as his teaching assistant, the crafty coed sets out to destroy anyone who gets in her way.

"American Psycho II is a darkly satirical script in the spirit of the original American Psycho, " Lions Gate Prods. president Michael Paseornek says. "Morgan J. Freeman is a talented director who we are convinced will make a film that will appeal to audiences from the late teens on up. And Mila Kunis is about to really break out. She has great timing for a dark comedy like this."

Paseornek adds that Lions Gate sees Psycho as a future franchise for the company. "We believe if we do these films well, that American Psycho can be a franchise," he saiys. "That will be up to us by delivering good movies."

The first Psycho was helmed by Mary Harron and co-penned by Harron with Guinevere Turner. The project, which stars Christian Bale, Samantha Mathis, Reese Witherspoon, Chloe Sevigny and Jared Leto, slashed $15 million in domestic box office receipts from a roughly $8 million budget.

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