BOOK BRATS

A few years ago, Hollywood was hot for the Brat Pack. Now, it’s after NYC’s Literary Brat Pack.

Among the deals pending or completed:

Tama Janowitz, 31, tells us the rights to her “Slaves of New York,” the short-story collection about Manhattan’s trendy art and club scene, have just shifted from the late Andy Warhol’s Factory to Merchant Ivory Prods. (“Room With a View”).

Bret Easton Ellis, 23, whose first novel, “Less Than Zero,” opens as a film in late October, says he is negotiating with “Zero” producer Jon Avnet for an original screenplay whose details he’s keeping secret. (Apparently the rights to Ellis’ second novel, “Rules of Attraction,” about rich kids at an East Coast college, are still up for grabs.)

Says the notoriously jaded Ellis, screenwriters “are ridiculously overpaid. It’s just insane. So if you want to ensure the rent for the next year or two, or want that car, or want to buy Mom a present, you do it. But you don’t get any satisfaction from it.”

David Leavitt, whose short-story collection “Family Dancing” already is optioned by Richard Roth Prods., will be “making an arrangement any day now” for his second book, “The Lost Language of Cranes,” according to his NYC literary agent, Andrew Wylie. Wylie further claims producers are pestering him about Leavitt’s current work in progress.

Finally, Pierre Cossette Prods. has nabbed rights to Jay McInerney’s second novel, “Ransom,” while the author’s first, “Bright Lights Big City,” is in post-production at United Artists, with Michael J. Fox in the lead.

Janowitz moans that “nobody yet” has the rights to her just-out novel “A Cannibal in Manhattan”: “Oh, please, write about it,” she implored, “so somebody will buy it!”