Gus Van Sant and author Bret Easton Ellis have both teamed up to write a feature on the double suicide of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.
Screen rights to “The Golden Suicides” have been picked up by PalmStar Entertainment, Celluloid Dreams and K5 Film. “The Golden Suicides” is a Vanity Fair articles written by Nancy Jo Sales.
The director of ‘Milk’, Van Sant, who is also prepping for Columbia Pictures drama ‘Restless’, is currently only involved as a writer at this point.
Ithaka Entertainment’s Braxton Pope is set to produce.
The film captures Duncan and Blake’s life as a popular couple on the downtown New York and Venice, California art scenes. Duncan was one of the first video game designers for girls and Blake created kaleidoscopic images, also known as “digital paintings”, shown on plasma screens.
Together, the couple went through a paranoid spiral, obsessing over thoughts that the government and religious organizations were conspiring against them. In 2007, she killed herself. Blake found her body on the floor of their bedroom, and walked into the Atlantic Ocean a week later, committing suicide as well.
Executive producers include Patrick Siaretta, Oliver Simon and Daniel Baur, and Courtney Andrialis is co-producer.
