Tom Wolfe’s biting 80s New York satire The Bonfire Of The Vanities has lived many lives. It’s been turned into an infamous Brian De Palma flop of epic proportions (which spawned Julia Salamon’s must-read making-of book The Devil’s Candy); it’s had the full-on opera treatment; and at one time it was even set to get an event series from The Big Bang Theory producer Chuck Lorre. Now, The Bonfire Of The Vanities is being relit and retooled at Apple TV as a limited series, and — per Deadline‘s reporting — Presumed Innocent showrunner David E. Kelley and The Batman director Matt Reeves are the ones looking to rekindle the fire fuelling Wolfe’s book.
For Kelley, The Bonfire Of The Vanities marks a return to Wolfe territory following his Jeff Daniels and Diane Lane led Netflix show A Man In Full. While that adaptation offered a contemporary take on its source material however, it remains to be seen whether this one will look to take the same approach. For those unfamiliar with the book (or film… or opera…), The Bonfire Of The Vanities takes aim at New York high society and the disparity between the Big Apple’s haves and have-nots through the cautionary tale of Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street bonds trader whose life catastrophically unravels after his mistress runs over a young Black man in the Bronx, offering a has-been journalist the opportunity of a lifetime when he agrees to chase the story and write about it.
Dealing with heightened racial tensions, political volatility, class and wealth inequality, and the moral bankruptcy of the elite, you could say that The Bonfire Of The Vanities is a story that has arguably never felt more timely or more resonant. Here’s hoping David E. Kelley and Matt Reeves’ take on it is closer to the book than the film on the quality scale then, eh?
