Amazon Studios Takes Film Rights to Manson-Centered Drama ‘Chaos’ (EXCLUSIVE)
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Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the grisly murders executed by the followers of Charles Manson, Amazon Studios has optioned film rights to a nonfiction title about a journalist who spent decades obsessively following the case.
The studio will adapt “Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties,” from author Tom O’Neill with Dan Piepenbring. O’Neill was assigned a magazine story on the legacy of the infamous Manson saga in 1999, disappearing into the complex and shadowy cultural vortex the events created in America. The film will follow O’Neill as a protagonist, he said.
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Christopher Kyle (“Alexander,” “K-19: The Widowmaker”) is writing for screen. Anne Carey and Amy Nauiokas of media venture Archer Gray will produce the project. The project was originally in development at Netflix with Academy Award winner Errol Morris attached as a producer, O’Neill revealed in a recent wide-ranging chat with Los Angeles Press Club president Chris Palmeri. He withdrew from development over creative differences, he said.
Manson will be everywhere in the coming days, thanks to the upcoming Quentin Tarantino film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which sees Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio as aging showbiz players living next door to Sharon Tate — the site of her real-life murder on Benedict Canyon’s Cielo Drive. The film opens July 26.
Read the full synopsis for “Chaos”:
A journalist’s twenty-year obsession leads to shocking new conspiracy theories about the CIA and FBI’s manipulation of the counterculture in this fascinating reevaluation of one of the most infamous cases in American history, the Manson Murders.
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