Sad times are known to pull people together, and two unlikely
candidates - film-maker Gus Van Sant and novelist Bret Easton Ellis,
united only by their two-part surnames - have been drawn close by a
mysterious double suicide which they plan to commit to celluloid.

Inspired by a Vanity Fair article titled The Golden Suicides, the pair
will recount the death pact between artist lovers Theresa Duncan and
Jeremy Blake who killed themselves within days of each other in 2007.

Van Sant, having piqued the Academy's interest with his gay-rights
biopic Milk, is currently working on morality tale Restless for
Columbia Pictures, which will star Tim Burton's new Alice Mia
Wasikowska. He will co-write the Golden Suicides project with Easton
Ellis - who follows his most recent film outing The Informers, with an
adaptation of Lunar Park due in 2011 - but so far neither is attached
to direct.

The story of the star-crossed lovers who took the noughties' digital
art world by storm, is one fraught with mystery and delusion. Popular
within the New York and Californian art scenes, the pair were known
for their work on videogames and new-media art-work and they were both
riding a wave of success when they died.

Closer inspection of their lives revealed they were beleaguered by
money worries and enveloped by a web of paranoia, with the couple
believing they were being stalked by Scientologists and that
government organisations were conspiring against them.