Being a millennial is hard. We can't afford the housing market, the polar ice caps are melting, and all of our teenage heartthrobs are growing up to be serial killers. In fact, some of them are growing up to be the same serial killer. First it was Zac Efron, and now Chad Michael Murray will play Ted Bundy in a movie. Because nothing says deranged murderer of women quite like those baby blues!
CMM going into serial killer territory is not exactly a huge surprise. I mean, he did play a cult leader who steals teenagers' organs and wanted to escape in a rocket on Riverdale (a storyline that I have been assured was not a fever dream I had after spending one too many nights reading Bughead fan fiction). So it's not like he's never played creepy before. Still, with this announcement coming on the heels of Evan Peters being cast as Jeffrey Dahmer, Penn Badgley stealing hearts on You, and Joshua Jackson playing a man literally nicknamed Dr. Death, it's a lot to take in.
I'm not the only one a little disturbed at the idea of A Cinderella Story's Austin Ames (aka Nomad) playing a man who killed 30 women in American Boogeyman, though the Internet seems more concerned with the fact that there is going to be another Ted Bundy movie, and less so about the actor playing him. This is, after all, the second big Ted Bundy movie starring a teenage heartthrob of the 2000s — Efron's Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile was just released in 2019 — and the romanticizing of American serial killers has become somewhat of a trend in Hollywood recently. (See above.)
Do we need another Ted Bundy movie in 2021? Well, American Boogeyman will, to its credit, be pretty different from the Efron movie. Extremely Wicked focused more on Bundy's relationship with Liz Kendall, whereas this new film will also include the "intrepid FBI agents Kathleen McChesney and Robert Ressler, organizers of the largest manhunt in history." They'll be played by Holland Roden (of Teen Wolf fame) and Jack Hays, respectively. So, I guess, yay for diversity in Ted Bundy storytelling?
Chad Michael Murray's Ted Bundy movie is set for release Aug. 16. RIP my teenage fantasies.
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