4 Things The Director Of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile Wants You To Know

Many people are excited to watch Joe Berlinger’s new project on serial killer Ted Bundy starring Zac Efron and Lily Collins, which just premiered on Netflix US. The trailer for the movie has divided people – with some say it glorifies violence. Others cannot wait to see this interpretation of the famed serial killer.

Either way, everyone is talking about it.

Joe Berlinger

If you’re a true crime buff, you will be familiar with Joe Berlinger’s name, as he also directed the highly-popular documentary ‘Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes’. Joe recently sat down for an interview and decided to share some of his thoughts on his works, people’s perceptions and the world at large. Here are a few things we learnt watching the interview: It was a mere coincidence that Joe made two Ted Bundy projects

You may think Joe Berlinger is obsessed with Ted Bundy. He has within a year made two very different projects related to the same person. But, according to him, it just sort of happened.

Joe stated, “Three months into it (Conversations with a Killer). I’d been working on the tapes, listening to the tapes. I was in Los Angeles having lunch with my agent and he said, ‘There is a script that’s kicking around Hollywood that’s called Extremely Wicked. You should read it.”

And the rest is history. Conversations with a Killer helped get him this job

A not so surprising fact about the movie is that it was on Hollywood’s blacklisted scripts. For those who do not know, a blacklist for scripts is a list of the most popular screenplays of a yet to be made movie, in demand by production houses and directors.

A script as good as this was obviously going to find its way on the Hollywood blacklisted script list.

According to Berlinger, “By definition, it was tricky. I was just kind of reading it because I was immersing myself in Bundy. That was really the intent. Flying back to New York from LA, somewhere over Denver, I finished the script and I texted my agent and I said, ‘Oh, my God. Let’s figure out how to do this. I love the point of view.’” This movie doesn’t just look at Ted Bundy

While his previous work focused only on the serial killer, this movie looks at the way in which the people around him are affected, specifically his girlfriend. This movie goes on to look at the other side of the side , as Berlinger puts it. By looking at the victims, he believes, you will see a new perspective that has not been showcased before. This movie defies expectations of usual serial killer conventions

It’s a weird concept that true crime is so popular all over the world.

With thousands of shows being solely dedicated to this genre, we noticed a trend. Many have pointed to the human urge to look at something dangerous; to understand it just so we do not make the same “mistake”. That is exactly what Berlinger tries to undercut with his work. He wants to show us that no matter how smart you are, or how many different documentaries you watch, until your perception changes, you cannot do anything.

“Bundy defies all expectations of what we think a serial killer is. We want to think a serial killer is some social misfit…” Berlinger explains.

“But Bundy teaches us that the people who often do evil in this world are the people you least expect and most often trust.”

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