Photo by Gage Skidmore

Heartthrob of yesteryear Harrison Ford has been cast as Michael Peterson, a Durham man convicted of murdering his wife in a case that attracted national interest through the Netflix docuseries The Staircase.

Variety reports that Ford, seventy-seven, will take on the role of Peterson, seventy-six, in an upcoming television series for Annapurna Television. (Related: Han Solo is seventy-six?!) The production company is currently shopping the project to networks and streaming services.

In 2001, Peterson, a novelist who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Durham in 1999, was accused of murdering his wife, Kathleen Peterson, and staging her death to look like an accident.

Peterson claimed he discovered Kathleen covered in blood at the bottom of a staircase in the couple's Durham home. The prosecution argued he viciously beat her to death.

He was found guilty of her murder in 2003 and sentence to life in prison. However, questions surfaced about the state's investigation, and he was given a new trial. Peterson was eventually freed in 2017 after submitting an Alford plea for voluntary manslaughter.

While lots of people think Peterson totally did it, others believe the culprit was, um, an owl.

The Netflix doc series—which portrayed Peterson in a very favorable light—popularized the theory that gashes found on the back of Kathleen's head were caused by the talons of a large owl rather than from blunt force trauma, as argued by the prosecution. There was even an owl feather found in her blood, his defenders say.

Annapurna has not confirmed who will play the owl.

Contact Raleigh news editor Leigh Tauss at ltauss@indyweek.com.

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