Today, in news that feels like it should have arrived in, like, 2014, right?: Ryan Murphy is making a TV show about Jeffrey Dahmer. Variety reports that America’s premier employer of TV murder clowns and historical re-enactors (at least, for the real knife-y bits of history) has set up a new limited series about the notorious serial killer as part of his big fancy deal at Netflix. Titled Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the series will track the many, many instances in which Dahmer—who killed, mutilated, ate, etc.’d at least 15 people in the back quarter of the 20th century, but who had the good luck to be born white in America—was arrested or otherwise investigated, but then let go, by authorities who just couldn’t believe this nice young man was killing and otherwise doing terrible things to all these other nice young men.
Murphy developed the series with producing partner Ian Brennan, with Mindhunter’s Carl Franklin and Pose’s Janet Mock attached to direct. The only cast member attached so far is the always excellent Richard Jenkins—although given that Jenkins is 73, and Dahmer died in prison at the age of 34, he probably won’t be playing the infamous killer. (We’d watch that, though.)
And again, it’s not that it’s shocking that Ryan Murphy is producing a TV series about Jeffrey Dahmer; it’s just that it’s a little shocking that it’s only happening now. To be fair, Murphy does have even more carte blanche to pursue projects these days than he did back when he was cranking out American ____ Storys for FX; he’s reportedly had as many as 10 projects greenlit by the streamer at this point, including Hollywood, Ratched, and the just-released film The Boys In The Band.