Emmy-winner filmmaker and producer Joe Berlinger will be directing another thriller based on the true events perpetrated by serial killer Ted Bundy. Berlinger is an experienced documentary filmmaker and keens in sordid events. His are the series of awarded films Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000) and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011), but also has experience in fiction titles like Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000). These references are extremely attractive when it comes to being in charge of depicting one of the American rock-n-roll star serial killers.
The project is in pre-production. It is still unknown the filming dates, or when it is expected to come out. We neither know much about the cast but who is set to play Ted Bundy. Former teenage star Zac Efron, basically known for High School Musical (2006) and in the quest to get his own little corner in box office hits like a remake for Baywatch (2017), will reincarnate the murderer author of 30 confessed homicides during the 1970s. The movie, written by Michael Werwie, who also takes the position of executive producer, is more centered in the perspective of Elizabeth Kloepfer, Bundy’s girlfriend at the time, who refused to believe the truth about him for years. Only when he started to confess his crimes and the evidence were too clear, Kloepfer started to be aware of the kind of monster she was sharing her life with.
This is not the first time Ted Bundy or his actions have been brought to the big screen, as well as numerous appearances and references in TV series. The most recent one is a small part in Dark Places (2015). But has also being the center of the plot in films like Bundy: An American Icon (2008), The Riverman (2004), Ted Bundy (2002) or The Deliberate Stranger (1986). Also funny to mention the cameo played by John Waters on his own film and serial killers parody Serial Mom (1994).
Theodore “Ted” Robert Bundy decapitated at least 12 of his victims and kept some of the severed heads in his apartment for a period of time as mementos. On a few occasions, he simply broke into dwellings at night and bludgeoned his victims as they slept. His victims were mainly young females who also got raped pre and/or post mortem. He was arrested on August 16th 1975, in Granger, a Salt Lake City suburb, by a Utah Highway Patrol officer who observed him cruising a residential area in the pre-dawn hours, then fleeing at high speed after seeing the patrol car. He died in the electric chair at Raiford Prison in Starke, Florida, on January 24, 1989.
