‘Serial’ Subject Adnan Syed Gets His Own HBO Miniseries
In the fall and spring of 2014 and 2015, the first season of the Serial podcast completely rewrote the rules of what podcasts could be, and how widely they could be consumed. The series was downloaded well over 100 million times, and its prolonged investigation into the murder case against Adnan Syed helped him get a new trial, which was granted just a few months ago.
Serial itself and the team that created moved on to other stories, but now Syed’s life will be chronicled on the small screen, as HBO announced today their new miniseries The Case Against Adnan Syed. It will be...
... a four-hour documentary series directed by Academy Award® nominee Amy Berg (“Deliver Us from Evil,” “West of Memphis”). The series will explore the 1999 disappearance and murder of 18-year-old Baltimore County high school student Hae Min Lee, and the subsequent conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, a case brought to global attention by the hugely popular “Serial” podcast. Working Title TV and Instinct Productions are producing and NBCUniversal International Studios are distributing the follow-up to the case, which will debut on HBO in the U.S. and on Sky Atlantic in Europe.
Interestingly, the press release goes on to say that the miniseries has been in the works since 2015, not long after Serial debuted online from WBEZ. (Around that same time, HBO had its own serialized true-crime hit with The Jinx, about the case against Robert Durst.)
This series is not and has nothing to do with the Serial TV show that was announced in September of 2015 that was supposed to be an adaptation of the podcast (not about Adnan Syed, but the making the podcast about him), and involve The LEGO Movie’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Nothing ever came of that, but now Syed’s case will get another spotlight. This time, with pictures! They’ll even move.