The author’s novel is now a musical due to make its Broadway debut – prompting Ellis to muse about what the murderous banker would be up to in 2016

A quarter century after the events of American Psycho, what would murderous Patrick Bateman be doing in 2016? The answer, according to the controversial novel’s author Bret Easton Ellis, seems to involve flashing his bling on Instagram and trolling people on Twitter.



The original Wolf of Wall Street, Bateman was a product of the “greed is good” 80s, where self-obsession was an art form and you lived or died by the label sewn into your underwear. Ellis’s antihero was a pre-crash Master of the Universe, and while, deep down, the world might not seem so very different a place today, we do in fact inhabit a whole other dimension of life online. Most of us have also woken up to the realisation that bankers are not gods to be revered.

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So would Ellis’s controversial novel about a depraved banker work today? Let’s – like most people – ignore the events of the movie American Psycho 2, in which Bateman is himself offed in the first five minutes. Ellis has offered his own take on what the serial killer might be doing now.

Writing for the magazine Town & Country, Ellis says that the outcomes of chasing the American Dream – “Isolation, alienation, the consumerist void increasingly in thrall to technology, corporate corruption” – still hold sway three decades after the late-80s setting of the novel.

Ellis writes: “We are in a time when the one per cent are richer than any human has been before, an era when a jet is the new car and million-dollar rents are the reality. New York today is American Psycho on steroids. And despite the idea of interconnectivity via the internet and social media, many people feel more isolated than ever, increasingly aware that the idea of interconnectivity is an illusion.”

In the 1991 book – and the subsequent movie starring Christian Bale, plus the musical which debuted in London and opens on Broadway next month – Bateman embarks on series of increasingly grotesque and sickening killings as a response to the narcissism of money-chasing Wall Street and the faceless anonymity that comes when everyone else is purely focussed on themselves.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christian Bale as Bateman in the film adaptation of American Psycho. Photograph: Allstar/Lionsgate/Sportsphoto Ltd

So in 2016 would Patrick Bateman – by now well into his 50s – still be carrying out his murders? “In the period when the novel takes place Bateman is a member of the as yet unnamed one percent, and he would probably still be now. But would Patrick Bateman actually be living somewhere else, and would his interests be any different?” says Ellis. “Would better criminology forensics (not to mention Big Brother cameras on virtually every corner) allow him to get away with the murders he tells the reader he committed, or would his need to express his rage take other forms?”

Although today we are much less anonymous, thanks to surveillance and the ubiquity of over-sharing on social media, Ellis thinks Bateman could use this to effectively hide in plain sight.

He writes: “Would he be using social media – as a troll using fake avatars? Would he have a Twitter account bragging about his accomplishments? Would he be using Instagram, showcasing his wealth, his abs, his potential victims? Possibly.”

The thing is, it barely seems likely trolling people on Twitter (or maybe the Guardian comments section) would scratch that particular Bateman itch, the one that led him to … well, you’ve either read the scene with the rat or you haven’t. Suffice to say, it’s not one for dwelling on here.

Instagram, though, with its coterie of rich kids bragging about their material possessions, does seem a perfect fit with Bateman’s reverence for expensive brands. The question is, would anyone do anything other than pity a man in his 50s showing off his Rolex and his Genesis vinyl, no matter how buff his chest?

Perhaps an ageing Bateman just wouldn’t work in 2016, though a reboot of the whole concept to retell the story with a young investment banker might. Ellis says: “There was the possibility to hide during Patrick’s 80s reign that there simply isn’t now; we live in a fully exhibitionistic culture. Because he wasn’t a character to me as much as an emblem, an idea, I would probably approach him the same way now and address his greatest fear: Would anyone be paying any attention to him?”

Before anyone gets excited though, this is all just conjecture. Ellis does not appear to actually have any plans to revisit Patrick Bateman – who originally appeared in a cameo in Ellis’s 1987 novel The Rules of Attraction – with either a sequel to the novel or a reboot of the story for the current day.

He says: “Like many characters a writer creates, Patrick Bateman lives on without me, regardless of how I felt or how close we became during the years it took me to write about him. Characters are often like children leaving the nest, going out into the uncaring world and being either accepted or not accepted, ignored or extolled, criticized or prized, no matter how the writer might feel about them. I check in with Patrick every now and then … but he has been living his own life for some time now, and I rarely feel as if I have guardianship over him, or any right to tell him where he would or would not be today, decades after his birth.”

Still, just to err on the side of caution, remember your internet safety, kids, and never give out your real-life address on Twitter. Especially to someone who follows Black & Decker.