The life and death of Brittany Murphy will be the subject of a two-part HBO Max documentary series, the streaming platform announce on Thursday. The series will cover Murphy’s career and her mysterious death in 2009 at just 32 years old. Murphy is best known for her roles in Clueless, 8 Mile, Sin City, and King of the Hill.
The series will be produced by Blumhouse Television and Pyramid Productions. It will show an “in-depth, intimate character portrait exploring the life and career and mysterious circumstances surrounding the tragic death” of Murphy, HBO Max said in a press release. Director Cynthia Hill’s series will “go beyond the conspiracy theories and headlines” with new interviews with Murphy’s friends and family, as well as never-before-seen archival footage.
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“I agreed to do this film because I think it’s a shame that Brittany’s promising life and career has been eclipsed by the circumstances of her death. I think it’s important to celebrate Brittany’s talent as we struggle to explain the tragic circumstances of her and Simon’s deaths,” Hill said in a statement. Hill earned an Emmy nomination for Private Violence, a 2014 documentary she also made for HBO.
“Our Brittany Murphy documentary cuts through the tabloid noise with an elevated, nuanced depiction of a sensational story,” Jennifer O’Connell, executive vice president, Non-Fiction and Live-Action Family Programming, HBO Max, added. “Crafting a grounded account of Brittany Murphy’s life struggles and sudden passing comes with great responsibility and we’ve partnered with a masterful creative team to produce a thoughtful examination of a tragedy that has long been cause for speculation.”
Murphy died in 2009 of what was suspected to be natural causes. In 2010, the coroner ruled that she suffered an accident caused by pneumonia with anemia and a mixture of over-the-counter and prescription drugs. Her husband, Simon Monjack, died of acute pneumonia and anemia months after Murphy’s death. There were rumors of a new investigation into Murphy’s death starting in 2016, but L.A. County Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter told Entertainment Tonight at the time that there was no reason to re-open the case.
Murphy began acting in the early 1990s and earned her breakthrough role in the 1995 movie Clueless as Tai Frasier. Her final film was the horror movie Something Wicked, which did not come out until 2014. That same year, Amanda Fuller starred as Murphy in a controversial Lifetime movie called The Brittany Murphy Story, which was widely criticized for sensationalizing Murphy’s life.
