Johnny Depp options West Memphis Three memoir

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There are currently two high-profile documentaries chronicling the West Memphis Three case: Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost trilogy and the Peter Jackson-produced West of Memphis. Now it appears there will be two high-profile narrative features as well.

Longtime WM3 supporter Johnny Depp has optioned the forthcoming memoir from Damien Echols. The memoir itself won’t be out until September, and will cover Echols’s life prior to the trial, his 18 years in prison and death row, and his release.

The other narrative feature about the West Memphis Three case is The Devil’s Knot, an adaptation of the Mara Leveritt book of the same name. Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth are attached to star in the film, with Atom Egoyan directing.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the coming years regarding the West Memphis Three. With renewed interest in what happened, the enhanced scrutiny of the case, and the revelations in West of Memphis (it suggests that Terry Hobbs was involved in child murders based on DNA evidence, witness accounts, and an apparent confession), maybe we’ll get to the truth someday.

[Via HitFix]

Hubert Vigilla
Brooklyn-based fiction writer, film critic, and long-time editor and contributor for Flixist. A booster of all things passionate and idiosyncratic.