Riley Keough is set to headline and executive produce Hulu’s upcoming series, Under The Bridge, according to Deadline.
The show is based on Rebecca Godfrey’s best-selling true-crime novel of the same name. Godfrey had been in development on the project with the streamer before she passed away from lung cancer in October 2022.
Keough will play Godfrey in the series — which looks at how the author gained the trust of the killers of 14-year-old Reena Virk, the Canadian teen who died of a brutal beating and drowning death after enduring years of relentless bullying.
(Credit: Amazon)
When the crime was committed in 1997, Godfrey was a young writer herself, which allowed the seven teenage girls and a boy accused of the murder to open up to her in ways they weren’t otherwise willing to. This gave Godfrey unprecedented access, but also drew her much closer to the case and the killers than was healthy for the reporter.
Godfrey had moved home to research a crime novel, and upon visiting a juvenile detention center, she came across the teenage killers, immediately becoming obsessed with the shocking story.
Godfrey died one week after Hulu ordered the eight-episode series, and she will receive credit on the project posthumously.
The case rocked the news in Canada at the time, shining a light on the long-ignored issue of bullying in school. Virk had left home to go to a party and never returned.
Samir Mehta and Liz Tigelaar will showrun and executive produce the series, and Quinn Shephard will adapt the novel and executive produce. Geeta Vasant Patel will executive produce and direct.
Keough, who appeared in Prime Video‘s The Terminal List, recently made her directorial debut with War Pony, which won the prestigious Camera d’Or prize at Cannes this year. She runs the production company Felix Culpa with Gina Gammell, who will also serve as an executive producer on the upcoming series.
Under The Bridge, TBA, Hulu