EXCLUSIVE: Monster was the 2003 film, directed by Patty Jenkins, that helped Charlize Theron win her first Oscar.
The movie told the story of serial killer Aileen Wuornos. That story is now being explored for Netflix in a feature doc from director Emily Turner.
Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killer will tell the story of how Wuornos murdered seven men across central Florida between 1989 and 1990.
Wuornos was a prostitute and she claimed that her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her. Her mother was 14 when she married her father, 18-year-old Leo Pittman, whom Wuornos never knew and killed himself after being sentenced to life in prison for raping a seven year old. Her mother abandoned her when she was four and she was adopted by her grandparents, who were alcoholics. She said that her grandfather sexually assaulted her and at 14 she became pregnant after being raped by a family friend.
Wuornos was executed on Florida’s death row in 2002, having been sentenced to death ten years earlier.
The doc, which is released on October 30, will reexamine her story “through a modern lens”. It revisits her story through audio interviews with those who knew her best and includes archival footage of former Dateline correspondent Michele Gillen and never-before-seen death row interviews with Wuornos, giving her voice in her own story, offering new insight into what happened, and why.
Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killer is produced by BBC Studios Documentary Unit and NBC News Studios. Turner directs with Kirsty Cunningham, Liz Cole, Elizabeth Fischer and Andy Berg as exec producers, Sam Dwyer and Christina Falk as archive producers, Ella Jackson as assistant producer and Jinx Godfrey and Daniel Lapira as editors.