Watch a trailer for the "most definitive" documentary yet about the Manson Family
Credit Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood, his depiction on Mindhunter, or just our enduring fascination with history’s most charismatic monsters, but Charles Manson continues to invade our cultural discourse, despite his family of acid-addled followers dissolving more than five decades ago.
Next month, Epix will premiere what it’s calling “the most comprehensive telling of the Manson Family yet told in a visual medium.” Called Helter Skelter: An American Myth, the six-part docuseries touts “never-before-accessed interviews” with on-the-ground journalists and former members of the Manson Family, as well as archival footage and newly-unearthed images.
“It will upend what people think they know about this layered and complex story,” promises a press release, which has us wondering if its findings dovetail at all with last year’s CHAOS: Charles Manson, The CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, a book aiming to connect Manson to mind control experiments conducted by the CIA.
“The legend of the Manson Family permeates our culture, our media and our collective fears,” Epix said in a statement (via Rolling Stone). “Why, after 50 years, does this ragtag group of hippies and their two-night murder spree still fascinate and perplex us? The six-episode Epix original series Helter Skelter: An American Myth is the most definitive recounting of the Manson Family story ever put on screen, and will challenge everything viewers think they know about this bizarre chapter in American history.”
Watch a trailer for the docuseries, which is produced by TV mogul Greg Berlanti and directed by Lesley Chilcott, below.
This isn’t the only Manson project currently in the works. Last year, it was reported that Please Kill Me authors Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain are working on their own oral history of the Manson Family.
Helter Skelter: An American Myth, meanwhile, premieres on June 14.