Atom Egoyan working on drama about West Memphis Three

PanARMENIAN.Net - The makers of a new documentary about the West Memphis Three are to change the ending of their film following the release of the men, as the Oscar-nominated film-maker Atom Egoyan revealed he is bringing his own dramatic version to the big screen, The Guardian reports.

Teenagers Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr and Jason Baldwin were convicted in 1993 of the murder of three eight-year-old cub scouts in the Arkansas town. Local police and many residents believe the boys were killed as part of a satanic ritual, but follow-up investigations have thrown doubt on the original enquiry.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory is the film-making team of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's latest attempt to prove that the West Memphis Three have been wrongly convicted, following previous films in 1996 and 2000. The Arkansas supreme-court ruling which freed the men did not go quite that far: it required the trio to file an Alford plea, which allows them to assert their innocence while accepting that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict them. Like its two predecessors, Purgatory will be shown on the HBO cable channel in the US once it has completed a round of film-festival screenings.

The duo criticized the judge's decision not to overturn the original verdict, following which Echols was sentenced to death and Misskelley and Baldwin were ordered to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Instead, Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin were sentenced to time already served and allowed to go free.

As well as the documentary, Armenian-Canadian director Egoyan is working on a drama about the West Memphis Three, based on the book Devil's Knot by journalist Mara Leveritt. The director told the Hollywood Reporter he was delighted the men were finally free. "[It's] very exciting news, obviously; quite shocking and sadly predictable," he said.

Egoyan revealed he hoped to uncover the "human drama" behind the convictions. "It's a contemporary Salem witch-hunt," he said. "The screenplay beautifully examines the ebb and flow of grief, disbelief and anger that flowed through the community in the wake of this catastrophe. It's an amazing story of a community and the conflicting emotional needs of seeking and finding justice, but also the complexities of jumping to conclusions. In this case, it was very clear to me that there was a miscarriage of justice. I think the documentaries have done a really amazing job of showing that. But there's a human drama behind it all as well. I think this script has been able to capture that."