Last year, Casey Anthony grabbed headlines when she said that she was releasing a racy film about her life.
The Florida woman, who was famously acquitted of murder in 2011 in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, disclosed that the film, tentatively entitled As I Was Told, would allegedly contain her explanation of how Caylee died. Anthony would work on the project with first-time filmmakers. At the time, Newsweek reported that the film could be released in 2020.
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But the film never happened. A source close to the production says that a multitude of factors — including COVID-19 — derailed the process.
“It just hasn’t really gotten off the ground,” says the source. “And then the Coronavirus became a thing and stopped any momentum that the film had. It’s effectively dead.”
Anthony, 34, lives in South Florida with a private investigator who worked on the case. She has kept a low profile since her acquittal.
“She’s very calculated,” a source close to Anthony told PEOPLE last year when the movie was announced. “She wants to tell her side of the story. That’s her big plan: to finally, 11 years later, tell what happened. And she’s going to tell everything.”
The movie was going to include several racy parts, Anthony told the Daily Mail. Anthony planned to acknowledge that she had been with several men, and there reportedly would have been a scene depicting how she became pregnant.
AP Photo/Joshua Replogle
Anthony’s controversial past includes the 2008 disappearance of Caylee, who was missing for 31 days before Anthony’s mother, Cindy, reported her missing. After a worldwide search for the missing toddler, the girl’s remains were found in a wooded lot less than one-third of a mile from the Anthony family home.
Anthony was charged with first-degree murder.
Her 2011 trial was a media circus, with at least 40 million people watching at least some of the testimony, according to Nielsen Research. She was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges on July 5, 2011 — but convicted of four counts of lying to police.
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After her acquittal, she was described by a Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman as “one of the most hated women in America” — a moniker that stuck.
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Anthony talked to several production companies before choosing one for the film, which she said would be filmed in North Carolina. Anthony would have been able to put her own stamp of approval on it.
“She’s going to have total editorial control,” the insider told PEOPLE last year. “And she’s going to push the envelope. She wants everyone to talk about this movie, and then she’ll never speak publicly about her life — or Caylee’s death — ever again.”
So will Anthony ever speak out with her version of what really happened? “Just because the film isn’t happening doesn’t mean that she’s not looking for a way to talk about her life,” says the source. “But it probably won’t be this film.”