News

Director Erin Lee Carr hates to use the term “brand” but that’s exactly what she’s cultivated when it comes to bizarre true crime stories. “People are like, ‘This horrible thing happened. Let’s call Erin Lee Carr,'” the documentarian told TheWrap.

It’s not surprising to see how Carr developed this reputation. She was behind HBO’s Gypsy Rose Blanchard documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest” and “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter,” both of which went on to inspire the Hulu scripted series “The Act” and “The Girl From Plainville,” respectively. In 2021, Carr released Netflix’s “Britney vs Spears,” the same year the pop icon’s conservatorship was terminated. She’s also produced a Peacock documentary on Stormy Daniels, a Hulu docuseries on the Sherri Papini kidnapping hoax and an HBO documentary on journalist Kim Wall, who went missing after boarding Danish entrepreneur Peter Madsen’s submarine.

Stormy Daniels Doc Finds Global Distribution

Blue Ant Studios (Canada’s Drag Race) has taken worldwide distribution on Stormy, an in-depth documentary about the life of Stormy Daniels coming on the day of Donald Trump’s hush money trial. Daniels made headlines in 2018 when The Wall Street Journal reported that, just before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, she was paid $130,000 to stop her disclosing an affair she and Trump allegedly had in July 2006. Trump’s trial takes place from today in New York. Peacock’s Stormy is produced by Emmy-nominated Erin Lee Carr and producer/director Sarah Gibson (Orgasm Inc: The Story of One Taste), who were also behind the Britney vs. Spears explosive doc. “Our team is thrilled to have international rights for this sought-after documentary produced by two renowned filmmakers who specialize in portraying the stories of women...

Spoler Alert: Do not read if you have not watched “Blank Spaces,” the May 3 episode of “The Girl From Plainville,” now streaming on Hulu.

Hulu’s “The Girl From Plainville” has come to an end. The eight-episode true-crime drama followed the real case of Michelle Carter and Conrad “Coco” Roy III, with the final episode revealing that she has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

In a title card at the end, it’s revealed that Michelle began her 15-month sentence in February 2019 and was released early in January 2020 due to good conduct. While those hearings could have been shown more, instead, the drama dove into a dream-like sequence in which Elle Fanning’s Michelle imagines what their lives could have been like if Colton Ryan’s Coco hadn’t died by suicide.

In this alternate reality, the duo never dated. Instead, he ghosted her after their Florida meeting, and...

When Chloë Sevigny was first approached about playing a role in Hulu’s limited series “The Girl From Plainville,” she Googled the real-life case behind it — how the relationship between Michelle Carter and Coco Roy resulted in Roy’s death by suicide in 2014 — to jog her memory, and found herself jarred instead when she came upon a photo of Carter.

“I remember seeing her in magazines, and immediately thinking she was guilty, and being, like, ‘What a bitch,’” Sevigny said with a laugh. “So like, wow: I’m really complicit in seeing this beautiful blonde girl and thinking that just because she’s beautiful and blonde, she’s a demon.”

On the series, Sevigny plays Lynn Roy, the bereft mother of Coco Roy (Colton Ryan). She came to the project late, but was attracted to it in part because of Fanning, who plays Carter. “Huge fan of her choices,” Sevigny said.

Hulu has unveiled the first trailer for its upcoming limited series The Girl From Plainville, which recounts the true-crime story of Michelle Carter and her role in coercing the suicide of her boyfriend. Elle Fanning stars as Carter, and the series is set to premiere March 29.

The details of the story are well-known: In July 2014, Conrad Roy died by suicide after poisoning himself with carbon monoxide fumes. An examination of his cellphone uncovered hundreds of texts from Carter imploring Roy to kill himself, sparking a nationwide scandal and a widely covered court case.

Britney Spears’ contentious conservatorship has been one of the most-discussed topics in entertainment news this year. Now, Netflix is preparing to explore the conservatorship via “Britney vs Spears,” an upcoming documentary slated to premiere on the streaming service. Netflix unveiled the trailer for the film on Wednesday.

The documentary is directed by Erin Lee Carr, who has made a name for herself through her directorial work on high-profile topics in titles such as “How to Fix a Drug Scandal” and “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter,” which premiered on Netflix and HBO, respectively.

Netflix published the trailer for the documentary one day after dropping a Twitter teaser for the project that featured an audio snippet of a voicemail Spears sent to a lawyer in 2009.

Spears has been in a conservatorship since 2008 following a series of highly-publicized court rulings and legal issues. Since then, her estate has been managed by her father,...

A Netflix documentary about Britney Spears is one step closer to reaching the screen, as a trailer teaser for the film “Britney Vs. Spears” confirms. In the 18-second clip, Spears is heard leaving a message for an attorney in 2009. A trailer is expected to drop on Wednesday, Sept. 22 and the doc itself on Sept. 28, ahead of Spears’ next court date on Sept. 29.

The documentary is being directed by Erin Lee Carr and has been underway for more than a year. Netflix declined Variety‘s request for comment on the project, and representatives for Carr did not immediately respond.

The Netflix doc is said to center around Spears’ highly-unusual conservatorship, and will feature key figures in Spears’ orbit. It is unclear, though highly unlikely that Spears, herself, will appear in the project, given how closely guarded she has been from media opportunities throughout the course of her conservatorship. Earlier this month,...

The series is based on the real-life story of Michelle Carter, a teenager who convinced her boyfriend to commit suicide

Colton Ryan will star alongside Elle Fanning in Hulu’s “The Girl From Plainville.”

Written by Liz Hannah and “Dr. Death” writer Patrick Macmanus, “The Girl From Plainville” is based on a 2017 Esquire article of the same name about Michelle Carter, the 17-year-old who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after convincing her boyfriend to commit suicide via text.

Fanning will star as Carter in addition to serving as an executive producer on the series alongside Hannah, Macmanus and Echo Lake’s Brittany Kahan Ward. Ryan will play the boyfriend, Conrad “Coco” Roy III.

Coco is described as “a sweet, caring young man grappling with anxiety and loneliness in a world he doesn’t feel he fits into. When he serendipitously meets Carter, he sees in her someone who understands his...

Hulu picked up a new scripted series starring “The Great’s” Elle Fanning, as well as a new food docuseries from chef David Chang, the streamer announced Thursday.

Written by Liz Hannah and “Dr. Death” writer Patrick Macmanus, “The Girl From Plainview” is based on a 2017 Esquire article of the same name about Michelle Carter, the 17-year-old who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after convincing her boyfriend to commit suicide via text.

Fanning will star as Carter in addition to serving as an executive producer on the series alongside Hannah, Macmanus and Echo Lake’s Brittany Kahan Ward. Jesse Barron, the author of the Esquire article is a consulting producer alongside Erin Lee Carr, the filmmaker behind HBO’s 2019 documentary about the case, “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth V. Michelle Carter.” Kelly Funke will oversee for Macmanus’ Littleton Road Productions.

“The Girl From Plainville” is produced by Ucp,...

In July of 2014, 18-year-old Conrad Roy III drove a pickup truck into the parking lot of a Kmart in the small town of Fairview, Massachusetts, filled the vehicle with toxic carbon monoxide and took his own life. He was one of 42,826 suicides in the United States that year.

What turned the incident from a private family tragedy into a media sensation were the circumstances around his suicide: On the day he died and for months beforehand Roy exchanged a cascade of disturbing text messages with his girlfriend, 17-year-old Michelle Carter.

“Conrad was somebody that was suicidally ideating for a good majority of his adolescence,” notes filmmaker Erin Lee Carr. “In the months leading up to his [suicide], instead of getting help, Michelle Carter was somebody that sort of pushed him to do it. And those events led to one of the most infamous Massachusetts cases the state had ever seen.”

Carr...

Current global events are bad, but HBO is offering free streaming of “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” and hundreds of hours of other content, which is good.

HBO will begin offering free streaming of the aforementioned series and dozens of other projects, starting Friday, April 3. The limited-time offer will be available on the HBO Now and HBO Go apps, in addition to those platform’s respective websites.

More from IndieWireStream of the Day: 'Ghost World' Is an Ode to Misfits, and a Profound X-Ray of Dying FriendshipStreaming Wars: Indie Streamers Are Getting Nimble in Face of Brand New Distribution World

Though most entertainment companies have made moves to keep their customers entertained as more people continue spending time indoors, few entities have announced plans to release such a large volume of content for free. HBO said the free programming will constitute nearly 500 hours but did not specify how long the free streaming would last.

Exclusive: In a competitive situation, Ucp has optioned the rights to Jesse Barron’s 2017 Esquire true crime article The Girl From Plainville for TV series development.

The Girl From Plainville is considered the definitive account of the events that led Michelle Carter, a young woman from a small town in Massachusetts, to stand trial for her boyfriend Conrad Roy’s homicide, as prosecutors argued that her calls and texts fueled his suicide when they were both teens.

In a highly publicized case, which raised the question, Can words kill?, Carter was convicted in 2017 of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging Roy, over the text messages and phone calls to kill himself. Roy had seen numerous mental health professionals and insisted he wanted to die. Carter was convicted mainly on the basis of her final phone call in which she told Roy to get back in his truck, which was filling with carbon monoxide,...

Early in Erin Lee Carr’s “I Love You, Now Die,” grieving father Conrad Roy Jr. breaks down sobbing while sitting in his suburban kitchen, still reeling from the 2014 suicide of his son Conrad Roy III. Overcome by emotion and in the midst of a bizarre trial against his son’s girlfriend, accused of aiding Conrad’s death via text message, “Con” can’t hold back his tears. Carr, who has long excelled at untangling complex legal cases in service to even-handed documentaries, stays steady on his crumpling face, letting the elder Roy tell his own story and work through his own feelings.

A similar scene unfolds in the second half of Carr’s truncated docu-series — airing on HBO, it’s just two episodes, though it could stand to be hours and hours longer — as Roy again sits at his kitchen table and blankly answers to accusations of child abuse.

HBO’s documentary “I Love You, Now Die,” about a young woman who went on trial for allegedly coercing her boyfriend to kill himself over text message, is clear-eyed and thoughtful, and, in two brisk installments, manages not to overstay its welcome. It tells a story that will startle the unfamiliar and, too, provide new angles for those who’d already known about the unfortunate pair of young people at its center. It amplifies Erin Lee Carr’s status as a young documentarian of unusual achievement, and provides an elegant argument for the true-crime genre as something other than its most heavily-publicized, and worst. This film doesn’t seek to convince you it has all the answers. It’s willing simply to ask interesting questions.

In the film’s first half, we learn the case against Michelle Carter, a young woman in Massachusetts who had been sending bizarre texts to Conrad Roy,...

The Montclair Film Festival will hold the world premiere of the restoration of the 1959 movie “The Diary of Anne Frank,” Variety has learned exclusively.

The black-and-white film, directed by George Stevens, has been restored by Twentieth Century Fox and the Film Foundation. The holocaust drama was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three, including best supporting actress for Shelly Winters.

The festival, now in its eighth year, will take place May 3-12 in Montclair, N.J., and features more than 150 films, events, discussions and parties. The festival had previously announced that it would open with a screening of Tom Harper’s “Wild Rose,” with star Jessie Buckley attending for a post-screening Q&A.

This year’s Storyteller Series will include A Conversation with Mindy Kaling, moderated by Stephen Colbert, taking place May 4 and A Conversation with Ben Stiller, moderated by Colbert, on May 5. Olympia Dukakis will attend for a...