Ryan Murphy's Monsters Will Go Back to the Start of True Crime Media

If Ryan Murphy knows how to do anything, it's spinning one successful series into many. After the surprising success of Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story in 2022, Murphy and Ian Brennan have a new season of Monster in the works, this time focusing on a case that had the media in a fix in the 1990s: the murder trials of Lyle and Erik Menéndez.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story is another trip back to a much-publicized true crime story from the 1990s. Wealthy Beverly Hills parents Jose and Kitty Menéndez were shot to death by their sons Lyle (age 21) and Erik (18), who after their arrest claimed that they had been victims of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by their father. The prosecution alleged they killed their parents to inherit the family's considerable fortune. Through the course of multiple trials — including separate trials that resulted in mistrial — the brothers were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

With its wall-to-wall TV coverage on Court TV and the micro celebrities like defense attorney Leslie Abramson who emerged from the case, the Menéndez trials were among the major forerunners to the media circus that surrounded the O.J. Simpson trial. The vortex of wealth and crime rarely fails to attract attention. The sordid details of the crime encouraged armchair analysts on both sides of the screen to weigh in on whether or not they believed the brothers. The presence of cameras in the courtroom turned a simple murder trial into an ongoing soap opera.

The Menéndez case was a significant moment in the history of true crime media, and it's been dramatized several times. There were TV movies in the direct aftermath of the case, a 2017 Lifetime movie starring Courtney Love and Nico Tortorella, and in 2017 Law & Order True Crime: The Menéndez Murders. That spin-off series was a fairly transparent attempt by NBC to replicate the American Crime Story format, and while it failed to capture the same cultural attention, it did get Edie Falco an Emmy nomination for her performance as Abramson.

After the Dahmer season of Monster was such a hit — Niecy Nash recently won an Emmy for her performance in it — Netflix greenlit the series for two more seasons under producers Murphy and Brennan. Last June, it was reported that Murphy would be leaving Netflix for Disney when his deal expired later that month. But even without Murphy in-house, he'll still be attached to the projects he launched at Netflix, including The Watcher and Monster. The Menéndez case fits perfectly into Murphy's penchant for repurposing sordid tales of real-life crime, wealth, and media scandal.

When Does Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story Premiere?

Currently, the series is set to premiere in 2024.

Who Stars in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story?

Cooper Koch will play younger brother Erik, while Nicholas Alexander Chavez will play Lyle. Koch recently starred in the independent horror movie Swallowed; Chavez has been on General Hospital since 2021, earning rave reviews and a Daytime Emmy award.

Oscar winner Javier Bardem will play Jose Menéndez, in his first collaboration with Ryan Murphy since 2010's Eat Pray Love. Chloë Sevigny will play Kitty Menéndez, hot on the heels of her performance as CZ Guest in Murphy's Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. Ari Graynor, most recently of HBO's Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, will play defense attorney Leslie Abramson.

Dallas Roberts (American Rust) will play Lyle Menéndez's psychiatrist Dr. Jerome Oziel, while longtime Murphy collaborator Leslie Grossman will play Oziel's mistress, Judalon Smyth. Finally, Nathan Lane will play Dominick Dunne, the famous author and crime novelist who covered the Menéndez case extensively for Vanity Fair. As further proof that the sun never sets on the Murphyverse, Dunne's novel The Two Mrs. Grenvilles was based on the real-life murder of William Woodward by his wife Ann, as dramatized in this season of Feud. Additionally, Nathan Lane played defense attorney F. Lee Bailey in The People vs. O.J. Simpson.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.