Courtesy of Simon & Schuster
It becomes the latest true crime TV project following the success of 'The Jinx,' 'Making a Murderer' and 'People v. O.J. Simpson.'
TNT is hopping on board TV's true crime obsession.
Following the genre's breakout success with The Jinx, Making a Murderer and People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, the Turner-owned cable network is developing a miniseries exploring the Chandra Levy case, THR has confirmed.
Produced by Sony Pictures Television, Keith Huff (ABC's American Crime) is set to adapt Scott Higham and Sara Horwitz's book Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery. Higham, Horwitz and Huff are set to exec produce with Lawrence Kasdan on board as a co-EP and potential director, schedule permitting.
Levy was a 24-year-old intern with the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 2001 when she went missing. The story gripped the nation after she was romantically paired with a congressman, Gary Condit, and the missing person case evolved into a murder investigation after her remains were found in in a park in Washington, D.C., a year later. The California senator was eventually cleared and the case went cold for six years.
In 2007, Washington Post Pulitzer Prize winners Higham and Horwitz were assigned to revisit the case. Through a series of 13 stories — which became Finding Chandra — they explored the case from the police's botched efforts, politics and political scandal and an illegal immigrant from El Salvador named Ingmar Guandique, who was later charged and sentenced to 60 years in prison after being convicted of Levy's murder in 2010. He was granted a new trial last years after his attorneys said a key witness lied to the jury. On Thursday, federal prosecutors announced they were dropping the charges against him, re-opening the search for her killer.
Finding Chandra, should it move forward, becomes the latest true-crime series in the works across the small screen. NBC recently picked up a Law & Order: True Crime-themed drama centered on the Menendez brothers and CBS is working on a shortform entry about JonBenet Ramsay.
