Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is ready to dive into the trial that became a sensation with its new trailer.
The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story from Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan follows the well-known case of real-life brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez. The first teaser trailer for the limited Netflix series had focused on a portrait of the “perfect” family, with cracks appearing to establish a dark tone, and hinted at the claims made by Lyle and Erik that they were subjected to years of sexual abuse at the hands of their father, José.
The first full trailer now released on Wednesday (below), dives much deeper, showing José (played by Javier Bardem) getting physical with his sons, with the preview alluding to more. The footage begins with the brothers (played by newcomers Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch), arriving at their home at night, each armed with a shotgun, and walking through the front door before multiple shots are then fired.
“Erik and I killed our parents together, so I’d say that makes us pretty close,” says Chavez, as Lyle, in a therapy session. The more-than-two-minute-long preview then follows the brothers after the murder, as they navigate the nightmares, guilt and elation that comes from the act in the time before they are arrested. “Our life was one thing, and we decided we weren’t going to take that anymore,” says Lyle in voiceover. “Starting right now, we’re gonna demand more out of life. And we are never gonna fucking go back.”
The footage then shows their arrests and trial. “You don’t murder your parents that way,” says Nathan Lane, playing investigative journalist Dominick Dunne. “Literally defacing them. That’s not about money. That’s about something else deeper and darker.”
Chloë Sevigny stars as Kitty, with Ari Graynor playing criminal defense attorney Leslie Abramson.
The second season of Netflix‘s Monsters series releases Sept. 19.
The Menendez case and trial was a media sensation in the early 1990s, and Monsters is the latest to adapt the story for the screen. Now, 35 years after the killings, Murphy’s new Netflix series will reexamine the self-defense theory that was put forth by the defense. During their original 1993 trial, the Menendez brothers claimed they shot José and Kitty after suffering years of sexual abuse at the hands of their father and with the knowledge of their mother.
After their conviction for premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder, both boys were given consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. And after a decade’s worth of appeals were rejected by California’s courts, the Menendez brothers have been spending their adult lives incarcerated. Now, journalist and author Robert Rand hopes to bring forth new evidence that could bring about the vacating of their sentences. In 2023, they filed documents seeking new habeas corpus petitions.
The limited series’ synopsis reads: “While the prosecution argued they were seeking to inherit their family fortune, the brothers claimed — and remain adamant to this day, as they serve life sentences without the possibility of parole — that their actions stemmed out of fear from a lifetime of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story dives into the historic case that took the world by storm, paved the way for audiences’ modern-day fascination with true crime and in return asks those audiences: Who are the real monsters?”
This next installment in Murphy and Brennan’s true-crime anthology follows Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the miniseries about Jeffrey Dahmer, played by Evan Peters, that launched in 2022. After that series became a monster hit for the streamer, Netflix ordered two more installments and turned the series into an anthology that will tell “stories of other monstrous figures who have impacted society.”
Alexis Martin Woodall, Eric Kovtun, David McMillan, Louise Shore, Carl Franklin, Scott Robertson and Bardem executive produce Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, alongside creators Murphy and Brennan. The series is directed by Brennan, Max Winkler, Paris Barclay, Michael Uppendahl and Carl Franklin and written by Murphy, McMillan, Todd Kubrak, Brennan and Reilly Smith.
