Taron Egerton In Talks For Alpha, A Ferocious Blend Of American Psycho And An American Werewolf In London

Netflix might be cooking up a blood-soaked finance thriller for Taron Egerton, and honestly, I can see it. While everyone waits to see if Carry On gets a sequel, Netflix UK just won a bidding war for a new genre project called Alpha that they chased specifically as an Egerton star vehicle.

So what exactly is Alpha?

Per Deadline, Netflix UK outbid seven other buyers for Alpha, which is being pitched as a fun, sexy, elevated genre piece. Egerton is circling the lead.

• Written by Hal Ozsan (yes, the actor who also fronted the rock band Poetry for Pornstars)
• Described as a mash-up of American Psycho, HBO's Industry, and An American Werewolf in London
• Premise: a mild-mannered American analyst rises through a cutthroat London investment firm and realizes the scariest thing there is the monster waking up inside him
• Translation: with a title like 'Alpha' and a nod to Werewolf in London, it sure sounds like a werewolf story set in high finance
• Producers: Adam Goldworm's Aperture Entertainment, plus Tory Tunnell and Joby Harold's Safehouse

That combo of glossy finance-world ambition and literal transformation is a wild swing, and I mean that as a compliment. No director, start date, or additional casting yet; this one is early, but Netflix clearly wanted it bad.

Meanwhile, about that Carry On sequel...

Carry On turned into one of Netflix's all-time most-watched movies last year. If you somehow missed it: Egerton plays a young TSA agent being blackmailed by a mysterious traveler (Jason Bateman) into letting a dangerous package onto a Christmas Eve flight. Egerton and director Jaume Collet-Serra have both said they would happily make a sequel, but they also know threading that needle is tough. Egerton put it this way:

'Carry-On 2 is really hard. It's a celebration of Christmas and a celebration of people who work at Christmas. It then needs to have this huge plot that needs to be foiled and maybe the earwig component. All of that is quite hard to achieve in a sequel without it feeling contrived and to the point of defying credulity.'

In other words, they do not want to crank out a sequel that just repeats the holiday gimmick and stakes without a fresh hook. Which makes Alpha feel like a smart pivot: a sharp concept, London setting, and a lead who can do charm and menace in the same scene.

If Egerton signs on, expect something like American Psycho meets Werewolf in London, but with bespoke suits and quarterly bonuses. I am very here for that.