Amazon’s MGM Studios has won a competitive bidding war to adapt Vanity Fair’s story surrounding a Texas serial killer, titled “True Crime, True Faith: The Serial Killer and the Texas Mom Who Stopped Him,” according to media reports.
Published in this September’s issue, the piece by Julie Miller walks through the 1981 abduction of Texas mother Margy Palm by serial killer Stephen Morin outside of a Kmart during the holidays. Following her abduction, Palm discussed her religious faith with Morin, eventually convincing him to let her go.
While Morin was sentenced to jail time for the abduction, a friendly relationship lingered between the pair, leading to Palm to visit Morin in prison on over a dozen occasions with Morin sending cards to Palm. Their friendship clearly had a profound impact on Morin, as he converted to Christianity after his conviction, before eventually dying at the age of 34 in 1985 via lethal injection.
In the piece, Palm reveals her hesitancy to share her experience with the numerous agents, authors or producers who had expressed interest in adapting her story, partly because, as she explains to Miller, she hadn’t processed the traumatic event until recently.
With the bidding war just completed, deals likely aren’t finalized for producers and executive producers attached to the TV adaptation, though the Hollywood Reporter reported that a celebrity-driven production company is in talks to co-proud alongside Amazon MGM Studios. Amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, which recently hit its 100th day, casting for the series has not begun.
The news of the Vanity Fair adaptation comes just a day after Amazon was also announced to have optioned the rights to Marisa Meltzer’s “Glossy,” which centers on Glossier founder Emily Weiss, for a TV series. Also published in September, “Glossy: Ambition, Beauty and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’ Glossier” follows Weiss from her start as a Teen Vogue intern to a beauty blogger to founding her own cosmetics brand.
