Hulu True Crime Collection Expands with “Dead Asleep” and “Captive Audience”

Hulu announced two new True Crime projects today, a documentary film called Dead Asleep and a docuseries titled Captive Audience.

(Gatehouse Media/Hulu/AP Photo)

(Gatehouse Media/Hulu/AP Photo)

What’s Happening:

  • Hulu’s True Crime Collection is adding a new documentary and a new docuseries to the lineup.
  • Dead Asleep is a documentary film produced by Pulse Films and Sky Crime which covers the case of Randy Herman Jr., who claims to have committed a brutal murder while sleep walking.
  • Captive Audience is a documentary series that explores the after effects of the Sayner family’s disappearance of their 7-year-old son in 1972, his return a decade later, and the hit TV movie that changed their lives forever.
  • Mre information on both new projects can be found below.

About Dead Asleep:

  • The traditional thriller narrative is flipped in this documentary about Randy Herman Jr., who committed a brutal murder and claimed to have done it while sleeping.
  • “Pulse Films has secured exclusive access to Herman and his family, the defense and prosecution attorneys, journalists who covered the case, forensic psychiatrists and world experts in violent parasomnia (sleep-walking) to give viewers an inside look at the shocking twists and turns of the controversial crime.”
  • Directed by Skye Borgman (Abducted in Plain Sight), who worked with Pulse Films on The Case Died With Her for Oxygen.
  • Marisa Clifford, Nelesh Dhand and Sunshine Jackson serve as executive producers for Pulse Films.
  • Jack Oliver and Poppy Dixon executive produce for Sky U.K.

About Captive Audience:

  • This limited documentary series tracks how true-crime storytelling changed over the course of 50-years through the lens of the Stayner family.
  • In 1972, 7-year-old Steven Stayner disappeared, returning home almost a decade later and inspiring a 1980’s made-for-TV movie (I Know My Name Is Steven) and “Stranger danger” PSAs.
  • “It’s about how truth becomes story and story becomes truth—on TV, in the justice system and in our minds.”
  • The series not only focuses on Steven, who became a hero for saving another child from the same suffering he endured, but also his older brother Corey, whose life took on a far more sinister path.
  • Directed by Jessica Dimmock (Unsolved Mysteries, Flint Town).
  • Executive produced by Anthony and Joe Russo, directors of Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War, plus Jen Casey, Andrew Jacobs, Mike Larocca, Todd Makurath, Nick Gilhool and Peter Rieveschl
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Alex Reif
Alex joined the Laughing Place team in 2014 and has been a lifelong Disney fan. His main beats for LP are Disney-branded movies, TV shows, books, music and toys. He recently became a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA).