Netflix and Ava DuVernay to collaborate

In the latest example of a real-life crime being dramatised for television, Netflix announced last week that it was turning the New York Central Park jogger case into a five-episode series.

The streaming service has stuck a deal with Ava DuVernay, the director of Selma, to write and direct the series. DuVernay, one of the most sought-after filmmakers in Hollywood, also worked with Netflix on the documentary 13th and is a producer on the television show Queen Sugar on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network. Winfrey’s Harpo Films will have a production credit on the new Netflix series.

The series will explore the notorious case involving five black and Hispanic teenagers who were accused of beating and raping a woman jogging in the park in 1989. All five of the accused were convicted and sentenced to prison in a case that was fraught with racial tension. But after another man confessed to the crime years later, the five were released from jail and their sentences were vacated. They ultimately received a settlement from New York City for about US$40 million. Netflix said that the series would begin with the events of the spring of 1989, when the teenagers were first questioned by the police, and continue to when they received the settlement from the city three years ago.

The case reappeared in the news during the 2016 presidential election.

Donald Trump, who was outspoken about the case when it became a tabloid obsession in 1989, asserted just weeks before the election that the five men were guilty.

In a statement, DuVernay said the story of the defendants had riveted her for more than two decades.

“In their journey, we witness five innocent young men of colour who were met with injustice at every turn — from coerced confessions to unjust incarceration to public calls for their execution by the man who would go on to be the president of the United States,” she said.

The Central Park jogger case joins several other infamous criminal cases in receiving television dramatisations: the O.J. Simpson case (FX’s The People vs. O.J. Simpson), the Menendez brothers (NBC’s forthcoming Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders) and the murder of Gianni Versace (an upcoming FX limited series by Ryan Murphy).