Lifetime announced yesterday that they’re going to be airing a television movie based on the tragic life and death of actress Brittany Murphy, because of course they are, who passed away in 2009 from unknown causes. The film is to star Amanda Fuller — who has previously appeared in Last Man Standing, Grey’s Anatomy, and a bunch of other stuff I’ve never watched — as Brittany, and Sherilyn Fenn (a.k.a. Audrey Horne from Twin Peaks) as her mother Sharon.
The two-hour film will premiere on September 6th on Lifetime, and the Hollywood Reporter has some details:
The movie will recount the story of Brittany Murphy’s younger years, including her mother’s efforts to turn her talented daughter into a star in the 1980s and ’90s, and then leads up to her death. It will also touch on the aftermath, when her mother dealt with claims that her daughter’s death was not accidental.
While Lifetime has not revealed the source of the script material, a spokesperson for Sharon Murphy has said she was not consulted for the movie and has not cooperated with the production in any way.
I guess it was only a matter of time before Lifetime mined Brittany Murphy for a biopic, the biggest surprise here is that they waited almost five years. Sadly, although Murphy was (in my opinion) both a brilliant comedic and dramatic actress, the end of her life actually did more closely resemble something akin to a Lifetime movie, with her shocking and shady death. I still fully believe that she was murdered by her creepy creep (now also deceased) husband Simon Monjack and/or her creepy creepy mother — while others think the government had something to do with it. Either way, no one knows what happened for sure, so any kind of insight into her passing is going to have to be rampant speculation at best, or total bullsh*t at worst on Lifetime’s part.
