Cool to ‘Bonfire’?

“The Bonfire of the Vanities” is getting a chilly reception at test screenings, sources tell us. The cold shoulder has generated at least one local TV report that the film won’t make its scheduled Christmastime release--which Warner Bros. flatly denies.

“It will absolutely be at theaters on Dec. 21,” says Rob Friedman, Warners’ president of worldwide advertising and publicity. He stresses that the controversial film is a work-in-progress. “Any screenings you may be reporting on do not necessarily reflect the final cut of the movie.”

Tom Wolfe’s best-selling novel was a dark and biting social satire about a snobbish Wall Street hot shot (played by Tom Hanks in the film) who accidentally runs over a black teen-ager in the Bronx, triggering a trial that brings racial recriminations and becomes a media circus.

Director Brian De Palma, working from a Michael Cristofer screenplay, has chosen to play the material for broad laughs, according to three sources who have attended test screenings.

As Wolfe’s novel ends, the central character is arraigned for manslaughter after the young man lapses into a coma and dies. As test-screened, the film’s finale is a wild fantasy in which Hanks’ character gets to lash out at all those who’ve made his life so hellish; it’s unclear what has happened to the young man.

Friedman says that “it has not been determined which ending will be in the final film,” and adds: “This movie is Brian De Palma’s vision--not Tom Wolfe’s.”