Less Than Zero series adds Austin Abrams in lead role

Hulu’s upcoming adaptation of the acclaimed Bret Easton Ellis novel Less Than Zero has cast Austin Abrams in the lead role of Clay, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Abrams, well-known for his roles on the final season of The Americans as well as The Walking Dead and Brad’s Status, will be playing the role previously portrayed by Andrew McCarthy (Weekend at Bernie’s) in the 1987 adaptation. The original film version also starred Robert Downey Jr. (Avengers: Infinity War), James Spader (The Blacklist) and Jami Gertz (The Neighbors) and was co-written by Ellis.

Less Than Zero is officially described as follows:

Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980’s, Less than Zero has become a timeless classic. This coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. They live in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money in a place devoid of feeling or hope.

Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay’s holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.

Ellis wrote a sequel to the book, Imperial Bedrooms, which was published in 2010. Other works by Ellis previously made into movies also include American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction, and The Informers.