Lawyers representing Amanda Knox are threatening to sue the makers of a BBC film about the murder of Meredith Kercher.
Knox was convicted of murder along with former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito but were later released from jail when the case went back to court.
However, the pair were re-convicted earlier this year of murdering Kercher, 21, Knox’s roommate and leaving her half-naked with her throat slit in the cottage she shared with Knox.
Knox remains in America while she tries to appeal while Sollecito is confined in Italy while the final appeal is processed.
The BBC movie about the murder from British director Michael Winterbottom and starring Kate Beckinsale and Cara Delevingne is based on the book Angel Face, which included first-hand coverage of the initial trial.
Knox’s lawyer Luciano Ghirga notes that the case is still ongoing and that Knox will sue if the film is “damaging to her image.”
Though he hasn’t seen the film, Ghirga “upposed - knowing the author - that it implies that Amanda is guilty,” according to the Daily Mail.
“There have already been at least two films and 12 books about the case. If the film is based even loosely on the murder in Perugia and if it is damaging to Amanda’s image, we will be asking for damages, as we have done in other cases.”
But the writer insists the film does not “place the knife in Knox’s hand.”
Kercher’s family has seen the film and approved it.
The Guardian also saw the film and described it more as a critique of the media circus surrounding the trial.
“The premise is unusual. Winterbottom does not focus on the murder of Kercher in Perugia in 2007, but on the journalists who covered the case, who chased lawyers down the medieval alleys of the town, who waded through reams of court documents written in punctuation-free legalese, and gleefully pounced on the sex life of suspect Amanda Knox,” it wrote.
“This year Kercher’s family claimed Meredith had been forgotten during the media frenzy over Knox’s guilt or innocence. So when Winterbottom’s film finally steers the plot firmly back to Kercher and her death at its conclusion, it serves as a wake-up call. A long moment where the Kercher character stares into the camera neatly evokes the sadness of her death.”
