West Memphis 3 Story to get Feature Film Adaptation
Well that was fast! It was announced earlier today the the West Memphis 3 have been released from prison after 18 years. back in 1993 Damien Echols, 36, Jason Baldwin, 34, and Jessie Misskelley, 36 were wrongly convicted for the May 1993 killings of three 8-year-old boys from West Memphis, Ark.
Hollywood didn't spend any time putting together a feature film production based on the true story of the West Memphis 3. The movie already has a screenplay written by Scott Derrickson and Paul Boardman (The Exorcism of Emily Rose), a major director Atom Egoyan (Chloe), and the film is ready to start production by spring.
It's not like all of this came together today, the timing was just right. Derrickson and Boardman started writing the script back in 2006 when the film first was first set up at Dimension Films.
According to Deadline, "The script is based on investigative reporter Mara Leveritt's 2003 book Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, an in-depth chronicle of the sensationalized trials that sent the three to prison for the murder of the three 8-year old boys who were found hog-tied in a drainage ditch."
Some of the other details of the movie details include the "life rights deals with some of the figures in the case, and especially Ron Lax, a private investigator who has been working pro bono on trying to overturn the verdict since 1993. There are no rights deals with the West Memphis 3 defendants Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., because at the time, two were serving life sentences and Echols was on death row." I'd like to think that in the end the WM3 would get some kind of compensation from this movie. After all it is about them and they spent 18 year in prison for something they didn't do.
In the end if you really want to see how this all played out, and want to know the whole story watch the two HBO documentaries that were made, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, and a sequel follow-up film made in 2000 called Paradise Lost 2: Revelations.
What do you all think about a WM3 movie coming together so fast after their release?