Yahoo News ‘Lost’: Beach House Pictures Sets Doc On Disappearance Of Instagram Adventurer Justin Alexander As It Shines Light On Asian True Crime
EXCLUSIVE: Beach House Pictures is riding the crest of an Asian true crime wave. Having created three premium doc projects for Netflix, the Singapore-based producer has now optioned the story of the disappeared Instagram adventurer Justin Alexander.
A premium doc, Lost, is in development after Blue Ant Media-owned Beach House took the rights to Harley Rustad’s book ‘Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas.’ It has access to all the key players in the story and is headed to Mipcom next week to find potential partners.
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“It’s at the nexus point between the East and West that we get fascinated about as storytellers in Asia and from an international perspective,” said Beach House co-founder Donovan Chan.
He has been closely working with co-founder and business partner Jocelyn Little and Head of Factual Rob Sixsmith to build a network of sources across Asia that provides local, often unknown, true crime stories with international potential. The company then partners with local creatives and crews to ensure the story has local filmmaking authenticity with Western production standards.
Lost, an example of the strategy, is billed as a “nuanced, important and heartfelt story about the disappearance or murder of America’s number one survival expert.”
The story starts in India’s Parvati Valley — known as the ‘Valley of Death, a place that has seen more than a dozen tourists disappear over 25 years — where Alexander had been living in a cave after abandoning his possessions following three restless years of adrenaline-pumping adventures documented on Instagram, where he had thousands of followers. It will then move to the U.S. as the filmmakers try to unpick what exactly happened to him after he mysteriously disappeared in 2016.
“He was living the life most kids dream of and living it all out on Instagram,” said Chan. “Then one day, he sent a foreboding text home from India. He then simply disappeared, and his family never got closure.”
“It’s a police procedural meets global adventure with reminiscences of John Krakauer’s Into the Wild,” added Sixsmith, referencing Jon Krakauer’s 1996 non-fiction book about Christopher McCandless, an American nomadic adventurer who perished on Alaska’s Stampede Trail. “That was about American culture then and this is about it now.”
The East-meets-West nature of Lost plays into Beach House’s Asian true crime strategy. “Often these stories are stranger than fiction and bring something refreshing and new to audiences in the West who may be jaded by what’s out there already,” said Chan.
“I often get told by studios and commissioners that they get pitched Asian stories by filmmakers in the West who haven’t spent a huge amount of time in Asia,” he added. “We work with creators in India, Korea, Japan and there is a huge difference when you get that perspective. With all the experience we’ve gained from previous docs, we’ll be able to provide a new perspective with Lost.”
Asian Wave
In recent years, Beach House has pushed heavily into what it defines as an “Asian true crime wave.” It’s a departure of sorts for a company that first launched back in 2005 focused on science and travel programs such as David Attenborough’s Wild City and Ed Stafford: First Man.
However, when the pandemic hit and, simultaneously, streamers such as Netflix began searching for original Asia stories, Beach House (which had become part of Blue Ant upon the Canadian company’s deal for RACAT back in 2017) switched focus to the types of stories premium streaming services desire most.
The strategy paid off. For Netflix, Beach House has now produced The Raincoat Killer, about one of South Korea’s most prolific serial killers, and Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case, which launched in July and follows the case of a British woman who went missing in Tokyo, sparking an international investigation. It topped the Netflix charts in the U.S. and UK.
Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wongso launched on Netflix on September 28 globally, shining a light on Indonesia’s ‘Trial of the Century,’ about the murder of Mirna Salicin by her friend, Wongso. The case was the first to be broadcast live on Indonesian TV and saw Wongso convicted of the killing. Beach House’s filmmakers received unprecedented, exclusive access and an interview with Jessica Wongso herself, an Australian native who was partially convicted with evidence from the Australian police.
“What the story exemplified is the Beach House model of making Asia true crime stories,” said Chan. “We have this amazing backlog of true crime stories and we can’t wait to bring more of them to Asian and international audiences.
“This isn’t a gratuitous love of superficial true crime,” added Sixsmith. “The stories we seek are very layered and multifaceted and a window into different worlds. They’re a surprising way of looking economic, social and cultural trends.
“It’s a way of investing in the country and the wider context of an Asian country. By its nature it’s a tough thing to make because of the sensitivities and concerns, and we’re not there to feast on the salacious. We absolutely want to bring an academic, journalistic rigor to our shows — these are not penny publication shows. Rainbow Killer, for example, looked at the birth of a new form of motiveless crime and the economic antecedents. That’s the nuance that this true crime can provide.”
Sixsmith, a former Raw TV development producer and series director of numerous British factual shows, paid tribute to the formation of the Association of True Crime Producers in the UK and Ireland, as he pointed to the ongoing duty of care necessity of making shows in the genre.
“Every story is different, is tricky and has its own pitfalls and landmines. At the heart of that is always the family and the sensitivities, as there usually is a victim in these situations, but likewise it’s also our job to get to the bottom of what’s happened. We have to do that as sensitively, slowly and methodically as possible.
“A lot of this is 24-hour discussions with the families. You’re never off the hook when you make these stories. These are real people and yet you have to make the story compelling for the television. For Lost, we’ve had very close relationship with Justin’s family from day one. In fact, it was one of Justin’s friends who brought me the story in the first place when I was working with him on a survival show in a distant part of China. We always have to remember there are people who are at the heart of this.”
“The idea is to bring the standards of telling true crime from the UK and the U.S. to Asia,” said Chan. “We made Netflix’s first crime story in Korea, and we’re unafraid of being the first to move, but when we do that we have to bring some experience of what true crime making in established markets is about. We are a forerunner so we are bringing those learnings to our projects. Hopefully doing that will influence what true crime making is about in Asia.”
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