Netflix has purchased Zac Efron’s Ted Bundy movie, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming service dropped $9 million for the biographical feature, which stars Efron as the notorious serial killer.
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In addition to Efron, the film also stars Lily Collins, Haley Joel Osment, Kaya Scodelario, John Malkovich and Jim Parsons. The film is said to focus on Collins’ Elizabeth Kloepfer, Bundy’s girlfriend who refused to believe he was capable of the crimes he was accused of.
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is written by Michael Werwie, and directed by Joe Berlinger, who is most well-known for his work on crime documentary films such as the Paradise Lost trilogy and the more recent Netflix docu-series Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes.
Notably, Metallica vocalist James Hedfield also stars in the movie, playing the role of “Officer Bob Hayward, a Utah highway patrol veteran who was the first law enforcement officer to arrest Bundy in 1975 after pulling the killer over and discovering burglary tools in his car but wisely suspecting much worse,” per a Facebook post by the band regarding Hedfield’s role.
Some have accused the the new biographical film of glorifying Bundy, such as Belva Kent, the mother of Debra Jean Kent, who Bundy murdered when she was only 17 years old.
“Why keep rubbing our face in it all the time? It’s very hard to deal with and when they keep bringing it up and putting it up,” Kent said of her feelings on the film. “It’s very disgusting to me…It’s kind of aggravating to me, but I just try to ignore it and move on.”
“[It] can happen to anybody,” she continued. “You just never know when you can be in that position. You just want to let people know that it’s out there…No one’s immune.”
Not everyone has had sharp criticism of the film, however, as Kathy Kleiner Rubin — who was 20-years-old when Bundy attacked her Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University in 1978 — said she does not have “a problem with people looking at it, and as long as they understand that what they’re watching wasn’t a normal person.”
“I believe that in order to show him exactly the way he was, it’s not really glorifying him, but it’s showing him,” she added. “And when they do say positive and wonderful things about him…that’s what they saw, that’s what Bundy wanted you to see.”
At this time, there is no announced date for when Netflix users can expect the film to debut.
