The team of director Mary Harron and screenwriter Guinevere Turner first made a name for themselves with the 2000 film American Psycho, a bloody big-screen adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel of the same name that cast Christian Bale as a serial-killing sociopath with an affinity for Huey Lewis and the News. The pair will now reunite for another film about a vicious killer — a whole “family” of killers, in fact.
Harron and Turner have reportedly agreed to collaborate on the upcoming thriller The Family, a movie about the notorious Manson Family murders of 1969.
Deadline reports that Turner’s script for the film is based primarily on Karlene Faith’s novel The Long Prison Journey of Leslie van Houten: Life Beyond the Cult, as well as Ed Sanders’ 1971 novel The Family.
Faith authored the nonfiction novel after meeting three of the girls involved with the cult led by Charles Manson that was responsible for nine murders. She met the girls while she was a graduate student teaching in prison.
One of the most notorious killing sprees in American history, Manson’s “family” of followers murdered nine people over the course of two nights in August 1969, including Valley of the Dolls actress Sharon Tate. Manson, van Houten, and the other members of Manson’s cult were eventually convicted of the murders and sentenced to death, but their punishments were commuted to life in prison in 1972.
Turner’s script for the film is described as a procedural-style narrative focusing on Faith’s attempts to teach the three women and the evolution they undergo as they gradually become more aware of the reality of their crimes.
With the script completed, casting is reportedly underway on The Family, with no release date scheduled at this point.
