Michael Peterson: Last News

Phoenix Pictures has set Jack Huston to direct the upcoming feature film Joseph Merrick, revolving around the individual known in history as the Elephant Man. The film will offer a fresh and deeply emotional perspective on Merrick’s remarkable life, illuminating the untold story behind the legend.

Colin Firth has boarded Young Sherlock, Prime Video’s new series from Guy Ritchie, which tells the origin story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved detective. He joins previously cast Hero Fiennes, Zine Tseng, Joseph Fiennes and Natascha McElhone.

Naman Ramachandran U.K.-based sales and distribution outfit Blue Finch Films has boarded worldwide rights, excluding Canada, to 1980s-set wrestling action-horror “Dark Match.” The film is headlined by professional wrestler and rock musician Chris Jericho and written and directed by Lowell Dean (“Wolfcop”). The film will launch later this year with its festival premiere to be announced imminently. Blue Finch will begin sales at the upcoming Cannes Film Market.

EXCLUSIVE: Wattpad/Webtoons has hired Josh Campbell & Matt Stuecken (10 Cloverfield Lane, Horizon Line) to adapt I’m The Grim Reaper from the Webtoon created by Grave Weaver. 

EXCLUSIVE: Terrifier 2 and 3 sales firm The Coven is making its first foray into production with exorcist horror Shadow Of God, which quietly wrapped principal photography in Calgary, Canada, last month.

Romantic Charles Bronson treated his ex-wife to a "luxury" hamper for Christmas - including wine, cheese and chocolate. The infamous lag sent Irene Dunroe the festive gift from inside HMP Woodhill.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Renowned alumni of the Jeffersonian Institute pulled out their security badges and patches to assemble Friday morning for a lively “Bones” writers strike reunion picket outside Fox Studios. The gathering of writers, actors, directors and crew members from the Fox drama series proved once again that “Bones” was one of TV’s happiest sets during its 12-season run from 2005-2017. Star Emily Deschanel, who played forensic anthropologist Temperence “Bones” Brennan on the procedural, was in attendance at the picket held on Day 67 of Writers Guild of America striket. So were series showrunners Hart Hanson, Stephen Nathan, Jonathan Collier and Michael Peterson and writer-producers including Liz Benjamin, Dean Lopata, Janet Lin and Karine Rosenthal.

Notorious prisoner Charles Bronson has lost a Parole Board bid to be freed from jail.

EXCLUSIVE: Wrestling star Chris Jericho, fresh off a supporting role in horror breakout Terrifier 2, is set to lead cast in wrestling-themed horror Dark Match.

EXCLUSIVE: UK sales firm 101 Films International has acquired worldwide sales rights (excluding North America) for drama feature Marlene, and will launch sales in Toronto this week.

The Staircase, Toni Collette dies – a lot. The Sky Atlantic show sees her playing Kathleen Peterson, the wife of American novelist Michael Peterson (played by Colin Firth) who was convicted of killing her and sentenced to life in prison in 2003, despite maintaining she had died after falling down the stairs. In 2017, Peterson was released after his charge was reduced to manslaughter and he was sentenced to time already served.

Hunter Ingram Each morning as Toni Collette brushes her teeth, an owl stares back at her.The stoic bird of prey is not perched outside her window but rather ornately sitting on her countertop, contorted into the shape of a ceramic coffee mug that she places her toothbrush into before she starts her day.“It’s there looking at me daily — twice a day if I’m dentally honest,” Collette says. “Maybe I need a new receptacle.”Even if its days as her morning companion are numbered, the mug is a surreal artifact of her newly Emmy-nominated turn as Kathleen Peterson, a North Carolina woman found dead at the bottom of her stairs in 2001 — a case dramatized by HBO Max’s true crime limited series “The Staircase.” The shocking death occupied headlines for months as her husband, Michael Peterson (played by Colin Firth), was tried and convicted of her murder — all of it later chronicled in a 2004 French documentary also called “The Staircase.” The making of that doc was part of the 2022 series.After years behind bars and later house arrest, Peterson was released in 2017 when he accepted an Alford plea, a paradoxical agreement in which he pleaded guilty but maintained his innocence.

Marta Balaga Avalon Fast was a young director to watch at this year’s Fantasia, bringing her 2022 feature “Honeycomb” to the Canadian fest as well as upcoming horror “CAMP,” presented in Frontieres’ official selection.Set to be produced by Michael Peterson (Peterson Polaris Corp), Peter Kuplowsky (Lowsky Productions), Taylor Nodrick and Fast herself, it will see a camp counselor for troubled youth who, reeling from a past tragedy, starts suspecting her female colleagues of witchcraft in service of a woodland spirit.The project, currently in advanced development, will allow the audience to feel a “real sense of magic,” promises Fast. “I want it to be bold,” she tells Variety.“I love [Nicolas Cage-starrer] ‘Mandy’, which has been a huge inspiration.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorHBO Max’s “The Staircase” marks the fifth collaboration for music supervisor Randall Poster and creator Antonio Campos. Poster says that the journey has helped build a musical rapport. When it came to finding the perfect needle drop moments for the true-crime series starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette, Poster looked to music that would help tell the story rather than rely on the musical tastes of the characters.“The Staircase” retells the death of Kathleen Peterson, played by Collette, from a fall from a staircase in her home.

BBC Strictly Come Dancing and BBC Breakfast star Mike Bushell has been smacked in the face with a ball in a major mishap. Mike was on Celebrity Catchpoint with Louise Minchin.

Michael Peterson likely won’t watch “The Staircase” but he has plenty to say about HBO Max’s dramatization of his life.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorWelcome to this week’s “Just for Variety.”Patrick Schwarzenegger can’t reveal any details about his work in the upcoming spinoff of Amazon’s “The Boys” — no, he won’t confirm reports that he’s playing a character named Golden Boy — but he admits that he has shown his father, Arnold Schwarzenegger, photos from the set.“He looked at me and he was like, ‘What the fuck are you filming?’” Patrick tells me on this week’s episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast. “I was like, ‘It’s this show called ‘The Boys.’ … You have to watch an episode to understand it, or else I can’t articulate what happens in it.”“The Boys” producers reached out to Schwarzenegger for the spinoff after meeting him years ago when he auditioned to play the character of Homelander on the original series.

HBO Max‘s limited series The Staircase wrapped up this week and left fans with a lot of questions to no definitive answer on if Michael Peterson killed his wife, Kathleen.

Cynthia Littleton Business EditorWhat’s harder to work with when it comes to writing a limited series — true stories taken from real life, or the stuff of fiction? A panel of top writers debated the challenges of working with headline-driven and historical material during the final hour of Variety‘s Night in the Writers’ Room on June 9 at 1 Hotel in West Hollywood.“There’s a little bit of a tightrope-walk in a true story that you don’t necessarily have to walk in fiction,” said Dustin Lance Black, the writer-producer behind FX’s “Under the Banner of Heaven.” He noted that the series, about the 1984 murder of a woman and her infant daughter in Salt Lake City, deals with three intertwined stories, one of which is fictional. “That one to me, I had a slightly easier time with.

Addie Morfoot ContributorAntonio Campos’ depiction of documentary filmmakers Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and Sophie Brunet in HBO Max’s “The Staircase” has led to a public dispute over their portrayal in the miniseries adaptation. But now, the real-life main subject of both series – Michael Peterson – is speaking out in an exclusive series of emails to Variety.Peterson’s wife Kathleen was found dead at the bottom of the staircase of their North Carolina home in 2001.

Sasha Urban editorHBO Max’s “The Staircase,” which concluded Thursday, has its share of revelations for longtime followers of the true crime case. But even for viewers who watched every bit of the 2004 docuseries, one special line from the dramatized version undeniably stands out.