On Friday, Netflix unveiled the first teaser for its new real crime documentary Into the Deep, which will be released by the streaming service next week, nearly three years after a rough cut was first shown at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. After Peter Madsen, an eccentric Danish inventor was arrested, tried, and convicted of killing a Swedish journalist, the project shifted in a more sinister direction. Madsen was given a life sentence in 2018 after the prosecution reviewed and used incriminating material from a documentary she directed by Emma Sullivan. After completing three successful submarines, Madsen became a local superstar in Denmark. He then intended to build a rocket ship.
The film was meant to chronicle the newest project of the larger-than-life Madsen, on which he collaborated with scientific students who were charmed by his charismatic demeanour. The pupils’ sense of betrayal after learning that Madsen had methodically plotted and executed the murder of journalist Kim Wall will also be explored in Into the Deep. The last time Sullivan saw Wall alive was when she was being led by Madsen aboard one of his submarines, and he captured the moment on film.
According to Sullivan: This is a tale close to my heart. I was fortunate enough to find a team of folks that were eager to lend a hand since they knew I was leading this project and they respected me. Then, though, the unimaginable occurred. The moment you’re sucked into that kind of nightmare, everything shifts. The film depicts the inner struggles of Madsen’s friends and family as they come to terms with his actual character and the horrors he perpetrated. In some of the footage seen in the teaser, Sullivan basically documents Madsen’s student collaborators as they come to terms with the possibility that their master may be implicated in a murder.
One guy claims, “The Peter I knew for 10 years and the Peter who went on the submarine on August 10 and came up are two completely different persons.” Danish filmmaker Tobias Lindholm, widely known for his work with Thomas Vinterberg, previously portrayed the subject in the six-part series The Investigation. The subject, real estate heir Robert Durst, seems to confess to killing a woman while being videotaped for the legendary HBO series The Jinx, which may bring to mind that show for fans of the true crime genre. The Jinx, like Into the Deep, helped build a case against its protagonist.
On September 30th, Into the Deep will be available on Netflix.
Synopsis
Emma Sullivan was planning a documentary on the eccentric inventor Peter Madsen and his homemade rocket. She ends up filming him doing something that would lead to him being convicted of the murder of journalist Kim Wall.