The next installment of Ryan Murphy’s Monsters arrives next month
Exactly 35 years after the Menéndez Brothers shot their parents inside their Beverly Hills mansion, Netflix has released a teaser for Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennen’s upcoming series chronicling the murders.
The quick clip for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, out Sept. 19, features the brothers arriving in the Beverly Hills driveway on that August evening, entering their home seconds before they shot their parents. A gunshot rings out as the screen goes black.
The Menéndez Brothers were convicted of murdering José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menéndez in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. They maintain to this day that their motive stemmed from a lifetime of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse from their parents.
In 1993, the first trial became a national sensation after being broadcast on Court TV, launched two years earlier by lawyer and journalist Steven Brill. In 2017, Brill told Rolling Stone that the trial “probably had the effect, maybe good, maybe bad, of demonstrating that, even if you didn’t have a celebrity if the circumstances were dramatic enough, people would be captivated. We’ve had lots of trials like that since, but that was really the one that proved that people would be interested in watching big trials.”
The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story stars Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch as Lyle and Erik Menéndez, respectively, with Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny portraying José and Kitty. Nathan Lane stars as Vanity Fair journalist Dominick Dunne, while Ari Graynor appears as defense lawyer Leslie Abramson.
The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is the next installment of Monsters, following 2022’s Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which starred Evan Peters as the famed serial killer. The controversial limited series was expanded into an anthology after it garnered 1 billion views in its first 60 days and earned 13 Emmy noms.