You know Zac Efron best from High School Musical, Neighbors and your girlfriend's deepest fantasies, but his next role is quite a departure. In the biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile, the 31-year-old plays notorious serial killer and necrophile Ted Bundy. Bundy confessed to murdering at least thirty women in the 1970's, but some experts speculate the number could be much higher.
Actually, Efron is perfect casting for the role, because Ted Bundy was charming and seductive. He prowled college campuses, persuading young women to come with him to secluded locations, where he raped them and killed them, sometimes not in that order. The murders that we know of occurred in multiple states over a four year period, and the victims were white women, mostly college students between the ages of 15 and 25.
Authorities finally caught with Bundy, but he slipped out of their hands. In 1977, he escaped for the first time by jumping out the second story window of a Colorado courthouse library. The following year, starved himself skinny escape to escape through the crawlspace in his prison cell. The first getaway lasted six days, while the second one lasted a month and a half. Bundy hightailed it to Florida, where he sexually assaulted and murdered more young women, before getting caught for the final time. In 1989, he was executed by electric chair.
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile focuses on Bundy's relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer, a divorcée from Utah who became his girlfriend. They dated for two years before the charismatic psychopath murdered his first victim, and eventually she discovers his secret. The pair met at a bar in 1969, and dated for two years before Bundy murdered his first victim. As Bundy's prolific killing spree continues, so does their troubled relationship, as he subjects Kloepfer to disturbing psychological abuse.
Today the first trailer for the biopic was released, giving our glimpse of Zac Efron as Ted Bundy on video. The film also stars Lily Collins as Elizabeth Kloepfer and Jim Parsons - aka Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory - as lead prosecutor Larry Simpson. I'm pretty sure nobody in the movie says "Bazinga!" but that cannot be confirmed at this time.
This weekend, the movie will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. In his interview about the project, Efron told Variety, "This movie was really about a human being, somebody that perhaps I would have been friends with, and a love story from a very unique perspective. I’ve never seen that before. It’s intriguing to me. I think it’s more psychological and even more kind of a mindf***."
To prepare for the role, he lost 13 pounds and watched footage of the real Ted Bundy's trial. "Something clicked pretty early on, and it was kind of scary," said Efron. "It was that Ted and I had quite a bit in common in the way we carried ourselves. There are a few mannerisms. You can tell he’s a bit bashful. He’s kind of shy. He’s a well-spoken guy, but he hides his anxiety with a bit of a smile. I didn’t want to do too much of an impersonation."
There is no release date scheduled yet for the biopic. But if you're impatient to get your Bundy fix, there's a documentary about him on Netflix that is apparently pretty scary. You could also get your Bundy fix by watching Married With Children on Hulu, but, uh, that's about a different Bundy. Whooaaaaa Bundy!
