American Psycho ... in Los Angeles?

Pay cabler Showtime has ordered a script for The Canyons, a soap/drama (with some horror overtones) from exec producer/writer Bret Easton Ellis (The Rules of Attraction, Less Than Zero). The series would revolve around a 19-year-old, hard-living magazine editor who flees Manhattan with his best friend and new girlfriend to move to Los Angeles. However, when his friend is killed in a rather mysterious accident, he finds himself alone in the most scandalously shallow city on the planet. (Hey, I can say that, I live here.)

So where's that horror overtone I mentioned before? Seems that the six main characters -- all various Angeleno archetypes including lawyer, art gallery owner, event planner, and bartender -- deal not only with the Melrose Place-esque demons of careers and relationships but also with violence and anxiety materialized as monsters and apparitions. (Hmmm, I thought they were called agents.)

If that sounds a little too David Lynchian for you (think Mulholland Drive), Ellis promises that he won't go in that direction. "There are no midgets walking backwards," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "We want something much more naturalistic -- a very realistic soap."

Personally, I think it sounds absolutely brilliant, if Ellis and Showtime can pull it off, and I'm making it my mission to track down a copy of the pilot script for The Canyons as soon as humanly possible.

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Jace is an LA-based television development and acquisitions junior exec who watches way too much television for his own good and would love a TiVo for every room in the house. (He’s halfway there.) His blog, Televisionary, can be found at televisionary.blogspot.com.

Televisionary has been named a finalist for Best Culture Blog in the 2006 Weblog Awards.