Doug Schneider

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

"Making a Murderer II" is apparently in the works.

Variety reports that filmmakers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi are laying the groundwork for a sequel to their blockbuster Netflix documentary about the slaying of photographer Teresa Halbach and the prosecution of Manitowoc County resident Steven Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, for her murder

“This story is obviously not over,” Ricciardi said. “It’s real life and (Avery’s and Brendan Dassey’s) cases are both still pending. We have no idea when the magistrate will make a decision in Brendan’s case. We do know that two potential outcomes are that the judge could order Brendan’s release or he could order a new trial. So we are on the edge of seats about that. To the extent that there are significant developments, we would like to continue documenting this.”

But there could be obstacles.

Stephen Glynn, who represented Avery in his $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County for wrongly prosecuting him for a 1985 rape that sent him to prison for 18 years, said: “There is a lot of hostility toward (Ricciardi and Demos) in Wisconsin."

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Timeline: History of the Steven Avery case

Related: “Making a Murderer” coverage, archived stories and more

In other "Making a Murderer" news from around the Web this weekend:

DiCAPRIO OR PITT AS AVERY?

Hollywood also speculates that a movie will be made about the Avery saga. That opens the door for still MORE speculation — specifically about who would play Avery.

Billy Bob Thornton is an odds-on favorite. That's according to the Cap Times, which says the Irish betting firm BoyleSports is laying 9/2 odds that the star of such a film, if it's ever made, would be Thornton or "Eastbound & Down" star Danny McBride, though the entertainment world has zeroed in on Thornton.

Other possibilities, according to the report: "Kiefer Sutherland is at 11/2, Woody Harrelson is 7/1, Jeff Bridges 9/1, and both Val Kilmer and Jeremy Renner are at 12/1. Leonardo DiCaprio joins Brad Pitt at 16/1 and comedian Louis CK comes in at 20/1. Longshots Paul Giamatti, John Travolta, Sean Penn and Daniel Day Lewis are priced at 50/1."

Don't sleep on Bridges, who's shown the ability to grow Avery-esque beards in previous movie roles, and Harrelson, whose performance as Marty Hart in "True Detective" demonstrated how he can master difficult regional speech patterns..

THE REAL VICTIMS

Meanwhile, over at Quartz, graduate student Sarah Milner-Barry writes that documentaries like "Making a Murderer" and "Serial" can shift focus away from women who were the victims of violent crimes committed by men.

"'Serial' and 'Making a Murderer' also share another distinguishing factor, one that is far less praiseworthy: the relative silencing of the realities of domestic abuse and violence against women," she writes.

"Perhaps inadvertently, both shows reveal a subtle yet sinister reality about the relationship between violence against women and true-crime shows, and their tendency to simplify and misrepresent what intimate partner violence looks like."

'RATIONAL PERSON'

Colleague Andy Thompson interviews experts who discuss the rarity of cases like Avery's where a person is wrongly convicted of one violent crime, then is arrested and convicted in another.

One also makes an important point to those who would argue that Avery did not murder Halbach.

“I think it is very easy to give an argument supportive of Avery’s innocence under the assumption that he is a rational person and would act in a reasonable way,” said Jack Levin, co-director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University in Boston and a nationally recognized authority on serial killers and violence. “The problem is, he isn’t."

ZELLNER UPDATE

We've written before about Kathleen Zellner's "defense by Twitter" approach to seeking Avery's exoneration. The Huffington Post has compiled a list of her tweets it says "appears to be increasingly confident he will soon be a free man."

"Kathleen Zellner has been gleefully tweeting anecdotes about the current circumstances of the subject of the hit series 'Making a Murderer,'" the site observes.

dschneid@greenbaypressgazette.com and follow him on Twitter @PGDougSchneider