“The Gabby Petito Story” is now being filmed by Lifetime in the mountains near Salt Lake City, Utah, but many people have taken to social media to express their outrage, as it hasn’t even been a year since authorities say Petito, 22, was killed at the hands of her boyfriend.
“Why? Don’t you think her family has been through enough?” one Twitter user asked.
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“That was...disrespectfully fast,” another posted.
According to Page Six, which obtained pictures from the scene of the film, Lifetime may have had good intentions though as the movie will be part of its Stop Violence Against Women public affairs initiative.
Still, some saw it as just an easy opportunity for Hollywood.
“Hollywood is making a movie about the death of Gabby Petito?!?! Unreal. Tone deaf. But I’m not surprised. Hollywood can’t come up with anything original these days,” one Twitter user posted.
Petito’s body was discovered Sept. 19, 2021, in a remote area in northwestern Wyoming.
She was reported missing Sept. 11 by her parents after she didn’t respond to calls and texts for several days while she and her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, visited parks in the West.
Laundrie, who the FBI said was a person of interest in her death, was later found dead in October of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Authorities said a notebook was found near his body in which he confessed to killing Petito, who had been strangled.
Laundrie called Petito the “love of my life” and claimed that she had gotten injured before he killed her.
“I don’t know the extent of Gabby’s ingerys (sic) only that she was in extreme pain,” he wrote. “I ended her life, I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted, but I see now all the mistakes I made. I panicked. I was in shock. But from the moment I decided, took away her pain, I knew I couldn’t go on without her.”