No stranger to tales of gritty murder, Michael Winterbottom, director of The Killer Inside Me and A Mighty Heart, is now developing a film based on the gruesome murder of Meredith Kercher, the British exchange student killed in Perufia, Italy in 2007.
For those unfamiliar with the Kercher case: Kercher, was studying abroad in Italy, where she was sharing a flat with two Italian women and an American student, Amanda Knox. On the night of Kercher’s murder, November 1, 2007, the Italian flatmates were away. At 8:45 PM, Kercher was last seen approaching her apartment, where a witness saw Knox five minutes earlier. Later that evening, a neighbor heard a “chilling scream” and then footsteps running down the metal staircase of the apartment away from the building.
Forensics later revealed that Meredith Kercher was attacked, sexually assaulted, and then stabbed to death around 11 PM. Her flatmate, Knox, did not call the police until the following day, after she had called a flatmate to say she’d come home to find the front door open, a window broken, and blood – but no Meredith. Police discovered Kercher‘s body in her bedroom. Knox first suggested a robbery, then that her boss had murdered Kercher, and flip flopped on whether or not she was there when it happened.
Ultimately, Knox, her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Guede, where charged with the murder after DNA evidence linked all three to the bedroom and Kercher’s body. However, as Knox did live in the flat, the defense argued her DNA did not necessarily tie her to the crime. The heated trial caused a media frenzy in Italy, as Knox claimed she’d spent the night at Sollecito’s, and the defense insisted Guede had come by and killed Kercher. Guede asserted that Knox and Sollecito killed Kercher, while he was in the bathroom – where he was listening to an i-Pod so he didn’t hear Kercher‘s cries. The press had a field day as reports hit that the burglary was faked. The evidence suggested multiple killers. Rumors of a satanic sacrifice surfaced. And at the center of all of this was an American girl the Italian press called an “Angel Faced” killer. Things got hotter internationally as the Knox family drew attention to the case to save Amanda, and accusations of anti-Americanism surfaced.
All three defendants ultimately were convicted. All sides are pursuing appeals, and as such the Knox family has threatened legal action on a planned American produced dramatization of the case (with Hayden Panettiere attached), fearing an unsympathetic portrayal would hurt Amanda’s chances in appeal. Knox‘s stepfather has said, “I hope these film versions tell the truth.”
But what truth? The case has so many proposed “true” accounts it’s hard to decipher what really happened. And that’s exactly what drew Winterbottom to it. Winterbottom himself was in attendance at a court hearing for Knox, when The Guardian spoke to him:
“You are drawn into this story, it is a puzzle,” said Winterbottom. “Usually puzzles in films are fake, but this is one without a solution.”
The film itself will focus more on the media who followed the case, as the oft controversial director has lined up Colin Firth (A Single Man) to play a journalist obsessed with the enigma of the case. “The taking sides over the case was extreme here,” Winterbottom said. “There was no explanation that covered everything and the journalists were drawn in in a way you would not expect.”
As 23-year old Knox stood before the court, not on trial for murder, but at a hearing to determine whether or not she’d have to go to trial for false accusations she made about brutality at the hands of the Italian police during her interrogation, Winterbottom refused to weigh in on Knox’s role in the murder, saying, “I have no view on whether they did it, the film will not be about that. There is unlikely to be a character playing Knox.”
Perhaps because of the outcry over his depictions of violence against women in his latest feature, The Killer Inside Me, Winterbottom insists Kercher‘s murder will not be re-enacted on the big screen: “What was horrific was that a life was destroyed at what should have been the most exciting time of one’s life. The tragedy must be in there somewhere.” This suggests his approach to Kercher’s murder may be to focus more on the reaction rather than the murder itself, as he did in A Mighty Heart.
Amanda Knox will be pursuing an appeal of her 26-year sentence in November. No word yet on when Winterbottom’s film will go into production.
Are you interested to see Winterbottom’s take on the events surrounding the murder of Meredith Kercher?