Netflix has ordered “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” a limited series about Jeffrey Dahmer, from Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, an individual with knowledge tells TheWrap.
Richard Jenkins will co-star on the show as Dahmer’s father, Lionel, a chemist, who showed him how to bleach and preserve animal bones as a child. The roles of Dahmer himself and Glenda Cleveland, a neighbor who tried to warn police about Dahmer’s behavior, have yet to be filled.
The project, which is Murphy’s latest under is mega overall deal with Netflix, will consist of 10 episodes and span the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s and end with Dahmer’s arrest in the early ’90s.
Per its description, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” will center on the titular notorious serial killer, but is “largely told from the point of view of Dahmer’s victims, and dives deeply into the police incompetence and apathy that allowed the Wisconsin native to go on a multiyear killing spree.”
The 10-episode show, which is expected to begin production in January, will dramatize “at least 10 instances” where where the serial killer was almost apprehended but let go and “touch on white privilege,” because Dahmer, “a clean-cut, good-looking white guy, was repeatedly given a free pass by cops as well as by judges who were lenient when he had been charged with petty crimes.”
Brennan will write “Monster” along with Janet Mock and David McMillan. Carl Franklin will direct the pilot, with Mock also set to take several turns behind the camera. Murphy, Brennan, Franklin, Mock, Alexis Martin Woodall and Eric Kovtun will executive produce “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” McMillan and Color of Change’s Rashad Johnson are supervising producers on the show and Scott Robertson is a co-producer for the series.
Deadline first reported that “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” had been ordered at Netflix.