Courtney Love has signed on to star in a Lifetime movie about Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers who infamously murdered their parents in 1989 and were convicted after a highly publicized trial.
The Hollywood Reporter first reported news of the untitled project, which explores the brothers’ lives and their motivations behind the grisly shotgun murders. As the official description states: “In the months that followed the murders, Lyle and Erik spent their inheritance lavishly, adding to investigators suspicions that they were involved in the parents’ deaths. After months of guilt consumed Erik, he confessed to the murders to his psychologist, leading to the eventual arrests of him and older brother Lyle. Their trial became a national sensation as the public devoured court testimony and the brothers testified that the murders were driven by a lifetime of sexual abuse by their father. After a mistrial and deadlocked jury, the brothers were later retried and convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. Erik and Lyle remain in prison today, where they are serving their time in separate prisons, nearly 30 years since murdering their parents.”
Update: The forthcoming film, Menendez: Blood Brothers, will premiere on June 11th. Along with Love, the cast includes Nico Tortorella, Myko Olivier, and Benito Martinez. Watch the first trailer below.
The forthcoming film is just the latest in a string of true-crime dramas for Lifetime, following last November’s Who Killed JonBenet? about the unsolved death of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. The network is still casting brothers Erik and Lyle.
The Menendez film is just one of several projects Love has in the hopper. She’s also been cast in Lifetime’s revisionist remake of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dreams as well as in The Long Home, a forthcoming indie drama directed by and starring James Franco.
