Wrong Man – (Left to Right) – Sue-Ann Robinson, Joe Kennedy, Ira Todd, Ronald Kuby, Joe Berlinger – Photo courtesy of Starz.
Starz new unscripted series Wrong Man examines three different inmates who have been incarcerated for decades and claim they are innocent. The series will uncover new theories, offer alternate suspects and reveal startling new evidence that could prove these inmates are not guilty.
Wrong Man – Peabody® and Emmy-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger – premieres on Sunday, June 3rd (9/8C).
NEW STARZ ORIGINAL SERIES “WRONG MAN” FROM AWARD-WINNING FILMMAKER JOE BERLINGER SET TO DEBUT ON SUNDAY, JUNE 3 AT 9 PM ET/PT
RIVETING SERIES UNCOVERS NEW THEORIES AND EVIDENCE AND OFFERS ALTERNATIVE SUSPECTS THAT COULD PROVE INNOCENCE OF INMATES IN THREE SEPARATE CASES
Beverly Hills, Calif., – March 28, 2018 – Starz, a Lionsgate company (NYSE: LGF.A, LGF.B), has announced that its new original series “Wrong Man” will premiere Sunday, June 3rd at 9PM ET/PT. This groundbreaking six-episode documentary series from Academy Award® and seven-time Emmy®-nominated and Peabody® and Emmy-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost), examines three different inmates who have been incarcerated for decades and claim they are innocent. The series will uncover new theories, offer alternate suspects and reveal startling new evidence that could prove these inmates are not guilty.
“Partnering with Starz to create a series that represents both great storytelling and an opportunity that actually moves the needle on social justice for the wrongfully convicted has been a great privilege,” said Berlinger.
In “Wrong Man,” Berlinger’s cameras follow a team of esteemed legal, investigative and forensic experts including renowned civil rights attorney Ronald Kuby, former prosecutor Sue-Ann Robinson, retired NCIS investigator Joe Kennedy, and Ira Todd, a member of Detroit’s elite Homicide Task Force, as they re-investigate the cases of three inmates who have been locked up for decades and claim they are innocent.
These types of wrongful conviction cases are not rare, according to the non-profit legal organization Innocence Project who estimates that up to 5 percent of all prisoners in the U.S. are convicted of crimes they did not commit. With more than 2 million people in prison, that means potentially 120,000 innocent people may be behind bars. This verité series follows investigators into prisons and to the scenes of the crimes to crack open the cases as they hunt for new evidence, track down witnesses and talk to often-reluctant law-enforcement, looking beyond guilt and innocence to expose the flaws in the criminal justice system.
(Left to Right) – Evaristo Salas, Curtis Flowers, Christopher Tapp
“Wrong Man” takes an in-depth look at the following cases:
Evaristo Salas was 16 years old in 1997 when he was sentenced as an adult to 33 years in Washington state prison. His murder conviction was based on two witnesses, including a confidential police informant who came forward to our investigators and spoke on camera publically about his incriminating testimony for the very first time.
Christopher Tapp confessed to killing and sexually assaulting an 18-year-old girl in Idaho but only after multiple and lengthy taped police interrogations. The mother of the victim has become convinced that his confession was coerced by police and that the wrong man is in prison for the murder of her daughter.
Finally, Curtis Flowers is on Mississippi death row despite the fact that for two decades, he’s been tried six times for the same crime by the very same prosecutor in a case riddled with evidentiary problems. Flowers maintains he had no part in the quadruple murder that landed him on death row.
“Wrong Man” is produced by Third Eye Motion Picture Company, Electus and RadicalMedia. Erica Sashin (“Parched,” “Belief,” “Border Wars”) serves as showrunner and executive producer. Berlinger directs two episodes and also executive produces with Chris Grant (“Running Wild with Bear Grylls,” “The Toy Box,” “Darkness”) and Drew Buckley (“Running Wild with Bear Grylls,” “The Toy Box,” “Darkness”) for Electus, along with Ben Silverman (“The Office,” “Jane the Virgin,” “Marco Polo”). Jon Doran (“Park Bench with Steve Buscemi,” “Neighborhood Sessions,” “Iconoclasts”), Justin Wilkes (“”The Fourth Estate,” “MARS,” What Happened, Miss Simone?) and Jon Kamen (“Bobby Kennedy for President,” “MARS,” Hamilton’s America) serve as executive producers for RadicalMedia.
Starz retains all domestic multiplatform pay TV and SVOD rights to the series. Global content leader Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF.A, LGF.B) retains all international and domestic distribution and home entertainment rights.
“Wrong Man” Online
For more information, go to the official STARZ Facebook Page and follow @STARZ on Twitter and Instagram. Join the conversation with #WrongMan and #STARZ.
Website: https://www.starz.com
About Joe Berlinger and Third Eye Motion Picture Company
Academy Award®-nominated and Emmy® and Peabody-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger has been a leading voice in nonfiction film and television for over two decades, with a particular emphasis on the criminal justice system. Berlinger’s films include the landmark documentaries Brother’s Keeper (PBS), a Sundance audience award winner; the Paradise Lost Trilogy (HBO), which helped lead to the release of the wrongfully-convicted West Memphis Three after 18 years of incarceration; Whitey: United States of America vs. James J. Bulger, a searing investigation into law enforcement corruption at the highest levels (CNN). Six of Berlinger’s documentary features have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, earning three Grand Jury Prize nominations. Berlinger has been a creator on numerous nonfiction television series, including six seasons of the critically-acclaimed Sundance Channel series “Iconoclasts;” the Emmy®-winning “Ten Days That Changed America” for The History Channel; the Emmy®-nominated series “Oprah’s Master Class” and “The System” with Joe Berlinger for Al Jazeera America. “Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru” premiered on Netflix in July 2016. Berlinger’s most recent TV series “Killing Richard Glossip,” which aired for Investigation Discovery in April, tells the haunting story of a former motel manager sentenced to die for orchestrating a murder that he swears he had nothing to do with. Berlinger’s most recent film, Intent to Destroy pulls back the curtain on mass murder censorship in Hollywood due to U.S. government pressure to appease a strategic ally by embedding with a historic feature film production as a springboard to explore the violent history of the Armenian Genocide and legacy of Turkish suppression and denial over the past century. Berlinger’s eight-part docuseries for Spike TV premiered this summer: “Gone: The Forgotten Women of Ohio,” focuses on the deaths and disappearances of six young women in southern Ohio – a tragic saga shrouded in a mystery that includes a dark underbelly of a struggling Midwest region plagued by drug and sex trafficking, and a system that seems to have failed to protect these women. Berlinger’s four-part true crime documentary series “Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders,” a reexamination of the crime chronicled in Truman Capote’s landmark book and Oscar-nominated film, premiered on Sundance TV in November of 2017. In the first months of 2018 Berlinger directed the feature film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile starring Zac Efron and Lilly Collins, slated to premiere this fall. Third Eye Motion Picture Company is Joe Berlinger’s film and television development company which partners with RadicalMedia on Berlinger’s nonfiction productions.
About Electus
Electus is a full-service production studio that creates, produces and sells a broad range of scripted and unscripted entertainment and branded content to broadcast, cable and digital/OTT platforms around the world. With talent, production and distribution under one roof, the company’s series include “The Toy Box” (ABC), “Running Wild with Bear Grylls” (NBC), “Bear Grylls: Face the Wild” (Facebook Watch), “Jane the Virgin” (The CW), “Flaked” (Netflix) and “Darkness” (Discovery), the upcoming “Wrong Man” (Starz) as well as “Hot Date” (Pop) produced by Electus’ Big Breakfast, and via its prodco Notional, the acclaimed “Chopped” franchise for Food. The company’s strategic investment deals include Hudsun Media (“The Toy Box”, “House of DVF” for E!) and Tim Puntillo’s Rio Bravo (“Food Fighters” for NBC), as well as a majority investment in management and production company Principato Young Entertainment. Electus is an operating business of IAC [NASDAQ: IAC]. For more information, visit www.electus.com.
About RadicalMedia
RadicalMedia is an Oscar®, Emmy®, Grammy® and Peabody® Award-winning studio whose work includes the Oscar®-winning documentary, The Fog of War, Oscar®-nominated and Emmy®-winning film, What Happened, Miss Simone?, Oscar®-nominated, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Emmy®-winning Under African Skies, Keith Richards: Under the Influence, Whitey: The US vs. James J. Bulger, Hamilton’s America and the SXSW award-winning May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers. Television credits include “Abstract: The Art of Design,” “Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders”, “MARS,” “Stan Against Evil,” “American Divided,” “Iconoclasts,” and “Oprah’s Master Class.” Currently in production are “The Fourth Estate,” an inside look at The New York Times and its editors and journalists during the Trump administration, “Wrong Man,” a docuseries that re-investigates the cases of three inmates who claim they are innocent and the new heralded series, “Bobby Kennedy for President,” a 4-part series coinciding with the 50th anniversary of RFK’s historic 83-day campaign, and “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman”. See more at RadicalMedia.com, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.