Ted Bundy Biopic Starring Metallica’s James Hetfield Coming to Netflix

Kreepin Deth, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
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The only thing weirder than High School Musical’s Zac Efron playing Ted Bundy? How about Metallica’s James Hetfield playing the highway patrolman who first arrested him? Both things have come to pass in Extremely Wicked, Shocking Evil and Vile, a new film about the notorious Seventies serial killer. The movie recently had its worldwide premiere at Sundance, and has since been acquired by Netflix for a reported $9 million following a bidding war with STX and Lionsgate. No word yet on when the film will hit the streaming platform, but it’s also set for an awards-season theatrical run in fall of 2019.

Extremely Wicked is director Joe Berlinger’s second Ted Bundy movie to be picked up by Netflix recently — his documentary series Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes is currently streaming. Berlinger is probably best known for co-directing the watershed Metallica doc Some Kind of Monster, and it was during the making that film that he got to know Hetfield, leading him to cast the singer-guitarist in his latest effort. “Having spent hundreds of hours behind the scenes with James and the rest of Metallica, I have experienced his charisma and powerful presence close up,” the director told Deadline when Hetfield’s casting was first announced. “It seemed only natural that he would bring that same power and magnetism to a dramatic role, so when he agreed to my pitch that he be in the movie, I was thrilled.”

Watch the trailer for Extremely Wicked, Shocking Evil and Vile below.