'The Boston Stranglers' flick gearing for fall shoot

With media attention focused on producer Gale Anne Hurd's "Terminator Salvation" movie hitting theaters this weekend, the Overture Films exec spills to Arrow In The Head that she's moving forward with "The Boston Stranglers," a film adaptation based on Susan Kelly's 1996 book that revisits one of our city's darker chapters.

Hurd says the film shot right after the series of 11 murders in the early 1960s starring Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda got it all wrong. In fact, investigators of the case maintained that the homicides were not committed by one person.

"The true story of something that we … we all think we know the true story now, but we don’t. Which is that Albert DeSalvo was branded The Boston Strangler, there was a movie about him with Tony Curtis as DeSalvo. As it turns out he was never convicted of the crime," the producer says here.

Hurd continues, "The film is set up at Overture and we’re in the process of casting. And we hope to shoot in the fall."

Written by Alan Rosen, the screenplay starts with DeSalvo's initial string of crimes as he maneuvers his way into the homes of women pretending to be a scout for a modeling agency. The story turns into a multi-faceted dramatization of the so-called botched police investigation, including the intense media scrutiny fueled by the Boston Herald, and a jailhouse confession by DeSalvo to convicted murderer George Nassar.

Director Brian De Palma has been linked to the project.

--Archival photo from The Boston Herald