Charlie Hunnam is finding his way back to the small screen. Sure, the Sons Of Anarchy star hasn’t been entirely away from TV in the decade since Jax Teller slammed into a Mack truck to deal with the Reaper. Yet he landed at the wrong time with Apple TV+’s Shantaram (which was far too “epic” and expensive for its own good) and got distracted by Zack Snyder’s Netflix films. And those who root for Hunnam were hoping that he could score a project both befitting his talents and qualifying as a resounding streaming “win.”
For Hunnam’s next act, he has almost certainly found a few such projects. In addition to starring in Prime Video/Amazon’s upcoming Criminal series, he is about to expand his Netflix horizons with the third season of Monster following the Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters) and Menendez brothers (Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez) chapters. Let’s get down to bone-chilling business with details on Ryan Murphy’s next dramatized killer.
Plot
If you’re wondering how well Hunnam will match up to the look of Ed Gein ^^^, then People has the photographic proof (seen right here), which suggests that he’s nailing the vibe. The season is already filming with Hunnam in 1950s garb and sporting an eerie resemblance to the grave-robbing killer.
Ryan Murphy has spoken about how fortunate this season is to have landed him, too. As the prolific producer and showrunner revealed to Collider, he had told Max Winkler (who is onboard to direct part of this season), “I was talking to Max about it. He is friends with Charlie, and he goes, ‘Oh my god, Charlie. Do you love Charlie’s work?’ I was like, ‘I’ve always wanted to work with him.’ So I met with Charlie and he’s just the most lovely person. He liked what we were doing. He liked what it’s about.”
Murphy then elaborated upon why he and co-creator Ian Brennan chose to focus on Gein for the third season:
“We were interested in this idea of, ‘Where did our cultural interest in serial killers begin? Where and how did this all start?’ Based on our research, the very first one who became a celebrity at that level was Ed, who was an instant crazy celebrity from the moment he was arrested … Nobody had ever heard of anything like that.”
Gein’s notoriety made him an inspiration for Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, along with Patrick Bateman in the American Psycho book, and Murphy further revealed that the season will discuss “how many villains and how much pop culture is based on Ed Gein.” This season will also aim to ask, “How did we get so interested in this and why? Where did it all begin?'”
Part of that question will lead to diving into Gein’s Wisconsin origins, his schizophrenia, and his barbaric acts including desecrating graves, snatching dead bodies, and fashioning a “skin suit.” Although he only confessed to two murders, he was suspected of several more homicides. He passed away in the 1980s of lung cancer at a psychiatric hospital, and Gein was recently the subject of an MGM+ docuseries, Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein.
Cast
Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein isn’t the end of the story.
According to Variety, he will be joined by Laurie Metcalf (as Augusta Gein, mother to Ed), Tom Hollander (as Alfred Hitchcock), and Olivia Williams (as Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville).
Release Date
With the first Monster season (dramatizing Jeffrey Dahmer’s atrocities) arriving in Sept. 2022 and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Mendendez Story landing almost exactly two years later, perhaps we can plan on the third season in Sept. 2026. Then again, the fact that Hunnam is already in the thick of filming could indicate an earlier release.
Trailer
No trailer yet, man, but this particularly gruesome Sons Of Anarchy scene proves that Hunnam has it in him to portray unhinged violence, although any Kurt Sutter-head knows that this is merely one of many that went down.
