Toyer is one of those projects that Brian De Palma just can’t give up. He’s been trying to get a film version of Gardner McKay’s novel/play up and running for six years, but now it looks like he’s closer to it happening than ever before.
Vulture reports that he’s teaming up with indie producers Tarak Ben Ammar and Scott Steindorff for a new version of the tale. McKay’s plot finds a diabolical lunatic abducting and psychologically playing with beautiful female victims – but never killing or raping them. His trick is that once he’s sated his manic need to taunt, he puts them into a medically induced coma. Which means that the police and justice system can’t actually charge him with a capital crime, so they can only bring him in for “mayhem”. And since the LA bureau is overburdened with seemingly more serious cases, he’s not exactly the highest priority.
That drives the female neurologist who treats the victims to team up with a newspaper editor in an attempt to get him to confess or commit a more serious crime.
This latest take will apparently transplant the film from LA to Venice, with De Palma playing his usual tricks on identity and style, setting the plot during the city’s Carnevale di Venezia, where the locals don masks and celebrate between boxing day and two weeks before Ash Wednesday. The plan is to create a festival for the production, since shooting during the actual event would be prohibitively expensive.
There’s no word on casting, and given that this one has been bubbling under for years, we won’t hold our breath to see it until De Palma is actually cranking the cameras.