First trailer released for ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’
True crime, Ryan Murphy, and Netflix are a match made in heaven, so there won’t be any outcome other than Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story becoming a worldwide smash hit when it premieres on the streaming service.
The spiritual sequel to the Evan Peters-led Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which ended up as one of the platform’s most-watched episodic originals ever, Murphy returns to the scene of another crime that shocked the nation by detailing the story of the titular siblings.
In 1996, Lyle and Erik were convicted for the murder of their parents, José and Kitty. The previously released teaser trailer offered a hint of what was to come, but the first full-length promo has revealed a much deeper and darker look at the latest series hailing from Murphy under his lucrative first-look development deal with Netflix.
Instead of being a by-the-numbers retelling of the killings and trial, it appears as though Monsters will place heavy emphasis on the brothers’ claims of self-defence after Lyle and Erik claimed during their trial in 1993 that they shot and killed their parents after suffering years of sexual abuse from their father, which their mother was fully aware of and did nothing to prevent.
They were ultimately convicted of premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder, with the siblings sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole. They’ve remained behind bars ever since, with the Monsters logline suggesting it’ll examine the case as a progenitor to the modern obsession with true crime, adding an almost metatextual undercurrent to the series.
Describing the Menendez brothers as having “paved the way for audiences’ modern-day fascination with true crime,” Murphy’s latest offering is guaranteed to become one of the most-watched and most talked-about TV shows on the planet when it premieres.
After all, his take on Dahmer captivated subscribers for weeks on end, while the omnipotent producer has also delivered The Politician, Hollywood, Ratched, Halston, and The Watcher since 2020 alone, all of which drew in strong viewership. That’s without even mentioning documentaries Circus of Books, A Secret Love, and Pray Away, or feature films The Boys in the Band, The Prom, and Mr Harrigan’s Phone.
Murphy is one of Netflix’s most prolific and consistently popular creators, true crime has always been one of the streamer’s biggest genres, and Monster was one of the top-viewed titles in company history, with Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story about as nailed-on as it gets to follow suit when it arrives on September 19.