Paramount Australia’s vice-president of content, Tamara Simoneau, told the Sydney Morning Herald there were multiple scripts floating around about the infamous case.
Erin Patterson visits lawyers, one month after the deadly mushroom meal.
“When something like this happens, a story that the whole country is obsessed with, then the world became obsessed with it, it’s bound to end up in scripts and in writing rooms,” she said.
“We’re really thrilled with what’s transpired for us and the casting of Melanie, who we think will be excellent.”
Emmy-winning Lynskey, who has garnered recent acclaim for her on-screen roles in Yellowjackets and Pike River, is no stranger to playing notable killers.
She got her first starring role as Pauline Parker, who killed her mother with the help of her friend Juliet Hulme, in the 1994 Sir Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures.
Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures.
Speaking to the Herald’s Jenni Mortimer earlier this year, Lynskey said her younger self would be shocked at how well things have turned out since her screen debut.
“Though I’d probably be like, ‘Oh, you only got married twice? Good job – that’s pretty good’. I thought I was a crazy person for a minute there, so I thought I’d have a lot of husbands,” she said.
“But I think I’d also feel really proud of myself. I don’t feel that different to that person, so I just would feel so grateful.”
Patterson, now 51, is currently in the process of appealing her convictions as she serves her sentence at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Melbourne’s Western Suburbs.
A release date for the series, or if it will be available in New Zealand, is yet to be announced.