Last year, news of an unlikely new film project surfaced: Zac Efron had signed onto star in a new biopic about notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, from a Black List-ed script. Details of the film, titled Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, trickled out over time, including news of its definitively strange cast featuring, among many others, John Malkovich, Haley Joel Osment, and Jim Parsons (yes, the Big Bang Theory one). Today, there is news of a new addition to the roster. Deadline reports that Metallica frontman James Hetfield has signed on to play Bob Hayward, the Utah highway patrolman who first arrested Bundy in 1975. This is Hetfield’s first portrayal of a fictional character in a film.
The casting is not as unprecedented as it might seem: Berlinger, who is normally a documentarian, is a friend of Hetfield’s who co-directed the acclaimed 2004 documentary about Metallica, Some Kind of Monster, and wrote a book about his time with the band called Metallica: This Monster Lives. Of the choice to cast Hetfield, Berlinger told Deadline: “Having spent hundreds of hours behind the scenes with James and the rest of Metallica, I have experienced his charisma and powerful presence close up. It seemed only natural that he would bring that same power and magnetism to a dramatic role, so when he agreed to my pitch that he be in the movie, I was thrilled.”
No release date for Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile has been confirmed yet. Read our ranking of every ’80s Metallica song here.
