Even before the cult success of Fight Club, news of a Chuck Palahniuk novel being optioned and seriously considered for an adaptation hit almost ever six months or so. Even when I spoke to the author back in 2008 he had plenty of information about upcoming adaptations which never came to pass. To be fair, he admitted that he wasn’t at all involved in the adaptation process for any of those projects, but all of his books still seemed to have a hum around them that wouldn’t go away.
That’s why, for his birthday this year, I did a special list for Print to Projector to show the state of the adaptations and pitch why they would all work as movies. Now today, /film is reporting that another grain of news in the rice field of Palahniuk’s film world has surfaced: a new director in the form of Samir Rehem and another stab at Invisible Monsters.
Rehem has more than a few shorts under his belt, as well as some episodes of Skins. Plus, he’ll be partnering with writer/producer Cameron MaLaren, who has worked on several short films. The point? It’s another independent production of a Palahniuk film, and this time it has genuine newcomers to the feature length world. But isn’t that how it should be? There aren’t many mainstream avenues that would handle a story about a former fashion model who’s now missing the bottom half of her face and the wacky adventures she undertakes alongside a near-woman who is larger than life about everything.
It’s come a long way since Jessica Biel was supposedly attached to it, but the big question now is whether this team can get it off the ground.