NBC Positions "Law and Order" Franchise to Bank on Resurgence of Audience Interest in True Crimes
A recent re-leaning towards true crime stories is no doubt behind NBC's move to bring forth a new crime anthology series as an expansion of its franchise, "Law and Order." It has ordered the creation of a true crimes anthology series "Law and Order: True Crime" from executive producer Dick Wolf, who signed a five-year deal with the network for the job. The new series, which is still under development, will have an eight-episode first chapter dedicated to the case of the Menendez brothers who murdered their parents more than 20 years ago.
It had been a sensational case which had shocked the nation with its themes of patricide, matricide, and sexual abuse as well as the fact that the sons, who had played out an elaborate ruse to pin the crime on the Mafia, bought themselves several months of reprieve before being arrested.
The brothers had grown up in Princeton, New Jersey, before the whole family moved to Beverly Hills, where their father, Jose Menendez, worked as a top-billed executive in the film industry. Their mother, Mary "Kitty" Menendez, had been a schoolteacher. They lived in a six-room mansion which had been rented in the past to the likes of Elton John and Prince.
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On the surface, they had seemed to live a quiet, perfect life, except that, in the evening of Aug. 20, 1989, brothers Erik and Lyle were said to have shot their parents in the television room where the senior Menendezes' had been spending their time while their sons purportedly went out to watch a movie. Jose had been shot at point-blank range, his skull and brains literally blown out. Kitty had also been shot multiple times, her face a mush and unrecognizable, her arm, mangled.
Theirs had been a close-knit family who called each other several times each the day to report even exam results. They had dinners together and took trips as a family, one of which was the shark-fishing trip on a chartered boat Motion Picture Marine the night before the murders took place. When the trial started, people would line up at 4 a.m. outside the courtroom to be sure of getting a seat. The Menendezes' lives had become public fare.
It is a fact not lost on NBC executives. The president of NBC Entertainment, Jennifer Salke, has told Variety, "We've been talking with Dick about how to create an event series coming out of the 'Law & Order' ripped-from-the-headlines brand. This case captured the public's attention like nothing before it as it examined taboo issues such as patricide and matricide in gruesome detail, all against a backdrop of privilege and wealth." She added, "We will re-create the cultural and societal surroundings of both the murders and trials when people were not only obsessed with the case but examining how and why these brothers committed these heinous crimes."
This will not be the first time the story of the heinous crime of the Menendez siblings has been brought to the small-screen audience in homes. Back in 1994, Zev Braun Pictures and Tri Star Television made the TV movie "Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills," which was shown as a four-hour mini-series. Before that, Fox had also created a two-hour-long film on the chilling murders.
The Menendez brothers, Erik, then 21, and Lyle, 18, were sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for their cold-blooded murder of their parents in their $4-million Beverly Hills home. It was a gripping horror tale that had captured the attention of the American public.
And no doubt this interest will be rekindled once Wolf is done putting together the works.
