UCP TO DEVELOP THE GIRL FROM PLAINVILLE TRUE CRIME SERIES
First Published on Deadline.com
UCP TO DEVELOP TRUE CRIME SERIES ABOUT TEXTING SUICIDE CASE
EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation, UCP has optioned the rights to Jesse Barron’s 2017 Esquire true crime article The Girl From Plainville for TV series development.
The Girl From Plainville is considered the definitive account of the events that led Michelle Carter, a young woman from a small town in Massachusetts, to stand trial for her boyfriend Conrad Roy’s homicide, as prosecutors argued that her calls and texts fueled his suicide when they were both teens.
In a highly publicized case, which raised the question, Can words kill?, Carter was convicted in 2017 of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging Roy, over the text messages and phone calls to kill himself. Roy had seen numerous mental health professionals and insisted he wanted to die. Carter was convicted mainly on the basis of her final phone call in which she told Roy to get back in his truck, which was filling with carbon monoxide, when he became scared.
Carter recently petitioned the Supreme Court to take the case, which was the subject of HBO’s 2019 documentary I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth V. Michelle Carter, directed by Erin Lee Carr and featuring Barron.
Carr and Barron will serve as consulting producers on the UCP series.