'The Staircase': The case of the man accused of murdering his wife who appeared lifeless at the foot of the staircase of his home

A 911 call from a man who said his wife appeared to be dead in the home they shared. “My wife had an accident, she is still breathing, she fell down the stairs,” so with a trembling voice the emergency line operator heard the call of Michael Peterson. His wife Kathleen had died and the nightmare was beginning. The facts are narrated in HBO Max's new proposal.

All preliminary indications suggested that it had been a domestic accident in which the woman had lost her life. But quickly the man's version began to enter swampy grounds, and the spotlights pointed on his figure. Michael was accused of killing his own wife.

The story became popular through a 13-episode docuseries that Netflix premiered in 2018. Although he took materials from the original docuseries broadcast on the Sundance channel in 2005, in 2012 and 2013 French director Jean-Xavier Lestrade added material to complete and reach the product available on Netflix.

There the case was unveiled outside the borders of the United States and will now have a fictional version on HBO's screen. The series will be released on Thursday, May 9 with three episodes and then one more episode weekly. The final chapter will be available on June 9.

Michael Peterson will be played in the series by Colin Firth (he was originally going to play Harrison Ford) while his wife Kathleen will be brought to fiction by Toni Collette. Although Michael was convicted of the murder of his wife Kathleen in 2003, a few years later, in 2017, he was released when an Alford plea of guilt was filed (a doctrine whereby a person pleads not guilty but who understands and admits that there is enough evidence for the prosecution to prove him guilty) and thus the charge was reduced to involuntary manslaughter.

The novelist in turn had a dubious record in the past, when he lived in Germany, a friend of the family died of a cerebral hemorrhage after falling down the stairs. Although Michael was not sentenced for that death, the prosecution brought him up during the trial for Kathlelen's murder.

The series was created by Antonio Campos and features executive production of Campos himself and Maggie Cohn (The Murder of Gianni Versacce) as showrunners. “It's been a long and winding road, but it was worth the wait to find partners like HBO Max, Annapurna, co-showrunner Maggie Cohn and the incredible Colin Firth to dramatize such a complex true story,” Campos said in a statement when the project's start was released.

Forman parte del elenco de The Staircase Michael Stuhlbarg, Juliette Binoche , Dane DeHaan, Olivia DeJonge, Rosemarie DeWitt, Tim Guinee, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sophie Turner, Vincent Vermignon, Odessa Young y Parker Posey.

The Staircase debuts on May 9 on HBO Max.

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