James Ellroy, the author of L.A. Confidential, made an appearance at the L.A. Times Festival of Books where he talked about the film adaptation of his book.
“People love the movie L.A. Confidential,” Ellroy said, via the Los Angeles Times. “I think it’s turkey of the highest form. I think Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger are impotent. The director [Curtis Hanson] died, so now I can disparage the movie.”
L.A. Confidential was released in 1997 and not only did it receive rave reviews, it was a hit at the box office as well. The film earned two Academy Awards including Best Screenplay and a Best Supporting Actress award for Kim Basinger.
Ellroy has been critical of the adaptation Hanson made of his work and following the film director’s death, the author wrote a piece where he talked about their differences.
“I conceived a tale of 1953 L.A. and populated it with men and women in extremis. Curtis Hanson rearranged my world and repopulated it with men and women less extreme than mine,” Ellroy wrote in the Variety tribute published in 2016. “My plotlines were reduced and re-stitched, my time frame was compressed, my love stories were re-triangulated. I created a world on paper. Curtis Hanson re-created it for film. It was my world but his world but my world to the point where all claims of ownership were blurred and lost. My dramatic sense and Curtis’s dramatic sense were always at odds.”
A sequel series to L.A. Confidential was shopped around by Ellroy and New Regency back in 2013. CBS ordered a pilot for the series in 2018 with Sarah Jones cast as the female lead. A sequel film was reportedly in the works according to The Ringer with Crowe and Guy Pearce set to reprise their roles and Chadwick Boseman as a young police officer. Filmmaker Brian Helgeland said that they had “worked the whole thing out” but “Warner [Bros.] passed.”