John Malkovich has joined the cast of the Ted Bundy movie ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’.
The ‘Being John Malkovich’ star – who has twice been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, for ‘Places in the Heart’ in 1984 and ‘In The Line Of Fire’ in 1993 – will play Judge Edward Cowart, who presided over the serial killer’s trial in Florida and sentenced him to death in 1979, Deadline reports.
Zac Efron is to star as Bundy while Lily Collins is signed up to play his long-term girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer.
The film – directed by ‘Paradise Lost: The Child of Murders at Robin Hood Hills’ filmmaker Joe Berlinger – will tell the shocking true story of Bundy, who raped and murdered numerous young women during a killing spree in the 1970s that shocked America and the world.
Bundy chose to represent himself at the trial, which was broadcast on national television, and appeared to develop something of a rapport with the judge.
The script has been written by Michael Werwie and is thought to explore the crimes of the killer through the eyes of Bundy’s girlfriend.
Following years of living in denial that Bundy could be responsible for the heinous crimes that plagued the states of Washington, Utah, Florida, Colorado, Oregon, Idaho and California, Kloepfer eventually turned him into the police but she only discovered the true extent of his actions when he began talking about them as he got close to his legally-ordered execution.
On the afternoon of his execution, Bundy – who was a self-confessed necrophile as well as a murderer, rapist and kidnapper – claimed that hardcore pornography was responsible for inspiring his violent crimes in an interview he granted to James Dobson, a psychologist and founder of the Christian evangelical organisation Focus on the Family.