Killer Films to execute Halston biopic and Party Monster

Things are looking busy for out producer Christine Vachon, whose Killer Films is producing an HBO biopic about the life of gay designer Halston, according to The Hollywood Reporter. HBO is developing the film with Killer and with Craig Zadan and Neil Meron's Storyline Entertainment. Simply Halston, which had originally been in production with Fox Searchlight, will be written by Daniel Minahan (Series 7) and James Lecesne (Further Tales of the City) from the biography by Steven Gaines.

"We're excited to be in business for the first time with HBO and with Killer Films," said out producer Zadan, whose credits include Me and My Shadows: Life with Judy Garland. "HBO always does these really avant-garde biopics--they break all of the rules, cinematically. When we got involved [with Killer Films], we came up with a whole new point of view and approach to telling the Halston story." Halston, who died of AIDS-related cancer in 1990 at age 57, is considered to be the first American designer with international impact.

In other Killer news, Variety reports that the company has snagged Macaulay Culkin to make his first film appearance in eight years. Culkin will play party promoter and convicted murderer Michael Alig in Party Monster, which will be the feature writing and directorial debut of out filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. (Bailey and Barbato made a documentary on Alig under the same title.) The film will co-star Seth Green and will begin shooting in New York City in April. Alig was a celebrity "club kid" and promoter who rose to prominence in the early 1990s, before he murdered his drug dealer by injecting him with Drano and throwing him into the East River. Bailey and Barbato's script is based on Disco Bloodbath by James St. James (who will be played by Green).

"[Bailey and Barbato] have their fingers on a kind of zeitgeist that is kind of amazing, a pop culture sense that's like playing great music," says Vachon. "They started following Michael Alig before he was Michael Alig, when he was a busboy at Danceteria."