‘Extremely Wicked’ Director Explains Why He Invented One Major Scene in His Ted Bundy Movie

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Extremely Wicked.

Netflix’s Ted Bundy movie, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile starring Zac Efron, has rekindled a level of obsession with the serial killer that we haven’t seen since Netflix’s Ted Bundy docuseries, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. (That is a joke. That literally just happened. The Ted Bundy obsession is endless.)

Both of those Bundy projects are helmed by true crime filmmaker Joe Berlinger. As Berlinger told Decider in a phone interview, that’s somewhat coincidental—the doc came first, then Berlinger happened to come across the Extremely Wicked script—but Netflix’s interest in the film was a direct result of the success of the docuseries. (In fact, Berlinger noted that the streaming service initially said no to Extremely Wicked until it saw how well Conversations with a Killer did.) Clearly, there is an appetite for this story—which means that you people want to know the truth. So Decider asked Berlinger and got to the bottom of what was, and wasn’t true in Extremely Wicked.

Is Extremely Wicked a True Story?

Yes, as you hopefully know, Extremely Wicked tells the true story of Ted Bundy, a serial killer who confessed to the murders of at least 30 women between the years 1974 and 1978. The script, written by Michael Werwie, was actually based on a 1981 memoir written by Bundy’s longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, played by Lily Collins in the film. (Kloepfer wrote the book under a pseudonym, Liz Kendall, by which she is also known.)

How Historically Accurate is Extremely Wicked? Which Scenes in Extremely Wicked Actually Happened?

Most of what you see in the film comes from the memoir and archived courtroom footage, as well as conversations that Berlinger and Collins had with the real Kloepfer before shooting the film. (You know that happy family montage sequence of Ted and Liz’s relationship through the years? That came directly from old photos that Kloepfer showed the director.) As you can see based on the footage shown during the Extremely Wicked credits, much, especially the court scenes, was meticulously recreated.

“I’m very proud that the movie actually is pretty historically accurate,” Berlinger told Decider. But of course, there are always exceptions.

Which Scenes in Extremely Wicked Didn’t Happen?

According to Berlinger, there were three major changes to the true story in Extremely Wicked.

First, Berlinger said, much of the timeline of these various trials and courtroom scenes was compressed in the name of having a reasonably-lengthed film. A few things were left out.

“For example,” Berlinger said, “in Florida there was actually a second murder trial after he was sentenced to death. He had abducted a young girl named Kimberly Leach, after the Chi Omega murders, and before he was tried. We decided not to shoot the Kimberly Leach trial because the film couldn’t support yet another murder trial.” For that reason, Bundy’s proposal to Carole Ann Boone (played by actor Kaya Scodelario in the film), was moved to the trial for the murders that happened at the Florida State University sorority, Chi Omega.

Second, many of the scenes between Bundy and Boone were based purely on guesswork.  “We have no idea what Carol Ann Boone and Ted actually said to each other,” Berlinger said. “So, of course, that stuff is invented, the interpersonal dialogue.”

Finally, the third and biggest change, said Berlinger, comes at the very end. (Spoiler alert—stop reading now if you don’t want to know how the film ends!) It’s a scene that both opens and closes the film: Liz visiting Ted in prison one last time, after he has been sentenced to death. Liz demands to know the truth: Did Ted kill all these women? At first, Ted vehemently denies his guilt, as he’s been doing the entire film. But when Liz demands it, begs him to let her free, he finally confesses by writing the word “HACKSAW” in the foggy prison glass window. Here’s Berlinger on how that scene really happened, and why he decided to heighten the drama:

The final moment between Zac [Efron] and Lily [Collins] was actually a phone call in the memoir. It was not an in-person visit on death row. So that was the most extreme example of taking dramatic license. Because of the era that we’re in of holding perpetrators accountable—which is something I obviously believe in—it was very important for me to make much more of that moment than is in [Kloepfer’s] memoir. So, her visiting him on death row, holding him accountable, making him admit to the degree that she makes him admit—that’s dramatic license. In the memoir, that conversation is more obtuse. He never really admits to her to the degree that we see it in the movie. She was satisfied that it was an admission, but it wasn’t nearly as dramatic or specific as we show in the movie.

So there you have it! Every biopic takes some level of dramatic license, but Extremely Wicked is a pretty dang accurate film.

Stream Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile on Netflix