Lifetime is making a movie about an infamous family murderer with NC ties
The story of Chris Watts, the man who murdered his North Carolina native wife and their two young daughters in Colorado last year, is about to get the Lifetime movie treatment.
Lifetime will include “Chris Watts: Confessions of a Killer” in its new series of “ripped from the headlines” true crime films slated to air next year.
The Watts gained national attention in August 2018 after he was interviewed by a local Colorado TV station — while wearing a Carolina Tar Heels T-shirt — to beg for the safe return of his pregnant wife, Shanann, and daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3. The three seemed to have simply vanished from their Frederick, Colorado, home, Watts said.
But police were suspicious of Watts from the beginning and he was soon arrested. After some questioning, he led police to the bodies of his wife and daughters and eventually confessed everything. He was sentenced to life in prison in November 2018.
The new Lifetime movie, set to premiere Jan. 25, will focus on the months leading up to the murder and the motives that “made this doting father turn into a cold-blooded killer.” It will star Sean Kleier (“Odd Mom Out”) as Chris Watts, Ashley Williams (“How I Met Your Mother”) as Shanann Watts and Brooke Smith (“Bates Motel,” “Ray Donovan”) as Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Tammy Lee.
The movie will air at 8 p.m. and will be followed by a documentary-style program called “Beyond the Headlines: The Watts Family Tragedy,” which Lifetime says will feature “exclusive never-before-seen footage” and new interviews with investigator Lee, who elicited Watts’ confession during an extended polygraph and interrogation session. The special will also have interviews with Shanann’s close friends, Cassandra Rosenberg and Cindy DeRosset.
Shanann, who grew up in North Carolina, was buried along with her daughters in Pinehurst in August 2018.
The Watts story was the subject of a Reelz documentary earlier this year, “Capturing Chris Watts,” which included some footage of Watts’ horrifying confessions of how he killed his family. His story was also told in the Investigation Discovery special, “Family Man, Family Murder.”
The case was also featured on an episode of “Dr. Oz” earlier this month.
Some of Lifetime’s other “ripped from the headlines” movies have tackled the college admissions scandal; the Amanda Knox story; the Cleveland abduction story; the story of a mother trying to save her daughter from the NXIVM sex cult; and the story of Alex Cooper, a teenager forced into conversion therapy after telling her parents she is gay.
