When Lou Diamond Phillips was announced to have been cast as real life serial killer Richard Ramirez in writer/director Megan Griffiths' THE NIGHT STALKER, many readers noted that, while Phillips is perfect for the role, the fifty-three-year-old is also a bit too old, given that most of Ramirez's horrific crimes were committed when he was twenty-five. However, the initial news did hint at the fact, and a new casting announcement further confirms, that the story deals with a Night Stalker who is years into his imprisonment.
Bellamy Young, who plays First Lady Mellie Grant on the ABC TV show SCANDAL, has signed on to star opposite Phillips in THE NIGHT STALKER as a defense attorney who was just fifteen years old during Ramirez's killing spree. The actress herself is in her forties, so Phillips could be playing a Ramirez who's near the end of his life. The killer died in 2013 of B-cell lymphoma at the age of fifty-three.
Synopsis:
The film incorporates Ramirez’s history of violence into a fictional narrative, which centers on a prison interview between the aging killer and a lawyer attempting to elicit a confession from Ramirez that will save another man from death row.
It's an interesting approach to take, and actually much more appealing to me than a straightforward depiction of Ramirez's crimes would be.