Last month, the Joe Berlinger-directed documentary series “Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes” arrived on Netflix and was and instant hit. Berlinger also directed the upcoming film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, starring Zac Efron as Bundy, and rather fittingly, the movie has been acquired by Netflix.
Deadline reports this afternoon that Netflix has purchased “U.S. rights and some foreign” for the Voltage Pictures film, with “an awards season theatrical run planned.”
In the film set in 1969, "Ted (Zac Efron) is crazy-handsome, smart, charismatic, affectionate. And cautious single mother Liz Kloepfer (Lily Collins) ultimately cannot resist his charms. For her, Ted is a match made in heaven, and she soon falls head over heels in love with the dashing young man. A picture of domestic bliss, the happy couple seems to have it all figured out … until, out of nowhere, their perfect life is shattered. Ted is arrested and charged with a series of increasingly grisly murders. Concern soon turns to paranoia—and, as evidence piles up, Liz is forced to consider that the man with whom she shares her life could actually be a psychopath."
Back in March, Efron described the film and his acting method to IndieWire...
“It’s very interesting. I think the movie itself is really deep,” Efron told the site. “It doesn’t really glorify Ted Bundy. He wasn’t a person to be glorified. It simply tells a story and sort of how the world was able to be charmed over by this guy who was notoriously evil and the vexing position that so many people were put in, the world was put in.”
He added, “It was fun to go and experiment in that realm of reality. I didn’t go full method and I didn’t have to like do any weird stuff to anybody to get into character.”
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile also stars Haley Joel Osment, Kaya Scodelario, John Malkovich, and Jim Parsons.