Well, this is certainly some odd casting news.
Deadline is reporting tonight that the upcoming Ted Bundy movie, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile has recruited Metallica frontman James Hetfield into its ranks. From what we understand, he’ll portray Officer Bob Hayward, who was the first cop to ever arrest Bundy. Though the singer’s appeared in various films and TV series over the years, he’s only shown up as himself, so this will be his first true acting role.
Hetfield joins a cast that already includes Zac Efron as the iconic serial killer, along with Lilly Collins, Jim Parsons and John Malkovich, among others. There’s no word yet on how big of a part Hayward plays in the story, but we’re certainly excited to see the music legend snagging a role here and look forward to hearing more about his involvement.
Joe Berlinger’s psychological thriller is based on the Black List script from Michael Werwie and is now in production, as evidenced by a recent slew of set photos. We don’t know too much about it just yet, but it’s been described as being in the vein of Nightcrawler and The Jinx, with the story being told through the perspective of Elizabeth Kloepfer, Bundy’s girlfriend who eventually turned him into the police.
That’ll present an interesting point of view for us to explore Ted from and we’re excited to see how it all turns out in the end. Speaking of which, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile doesn’t have a release date to call its own just yet, but with things heating up, we imagine that’ll change quite soon. And when it does, we’ll be sure to let you know.