Netflix and Ryan Murphy’s ‘Monster’ Season 2, Focused on Menendez Brothers, Gets Release Date
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s Monsters series has a launch date: Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story will release on Netflix on Sept. 19.
This next installment in Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime anthology series follows Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the miniseries about Jeffrey Dahmer, played by Evan Peters, that launched in 2022. After that series became a monster hit for the streamer, Netflix ordered two more installments and turned the series into an anthology that will tell “stories of other monstrous figures who have impacted society.”
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Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story will follow the well-known case of real-life brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez.
The synopsis reads: “While the prosecution argued they were seeking to inherit their family fortune, the brothers claimed — and remain adamant to this day, as they serve life sentences without the possibility of parole — that their actions stemmed out of fear from a lifetime of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story dives into the historic case that took the world by storm, paved the way for audiences’ modern-day fascination with true crime and in return asks those audiences: Who are the real monsters?”
Newcomers Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch portray brothers Lyle and Erik, while Javier Bardem and Chlo? Sevigny star as their parents, Jose and Kitty. Nathan Lane takes on the role of investigative journalist Dominick Dunne, and Ari Graynor plays criminal defense attorney Leslie Abramson.
The Menendez case was a media sensation in the early 1990s, and Monsters is the latest to adapt the story for the screen. Fox and CBS aired TV movies about the murders in 1994, Lifetime ran Menendez: Blood Brothers in 2017 and Law & Order: True Crime on NBC also focused on the case, with Edie Falco starring as Abramson. Peacock’s 2023 doc Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed featured a former member of boy band Menudo, Roy Rosselló, claiming Jose Menendez sexually assaulted him when Rosselló was a teenager.
Alexis Martin Woodall, Eric Kovtun, David McMillan, Louise Shore, Carl Franklin, Scott Robertson and Bardem executive produce Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, alongside creators Murphy and Ian Brennan. The series is directed by Brennan, Max Winkler, Paris Barclay, Michael Uppendahl and Carl Franklin and written by Murphy, McMillan, Todd Kubrak, Brennan and Reilly Smith.
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