Film Adaptation of Alice Sebold’s Lucky Canceled After Central Rape Conviction is Overturned

Days after the 1982 rape conviction of Anthony Broadwater was overturned, which erroneously sent the man to prison for 16 years, the planned film adaptation of author Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky has been scrapped, which was based on the event and the case. The film had been scheduled to star You’s Victoria Pedretti and be directed by Karen Moncreiff, but it was ultimately the involvement of film producer Tim Mucciante that started the process toward Broadwater’s exoneration, as he became skeptical of some of the inconsistencies in the story of Lucky and pushed for renewed investigation.

Ultimately, Broadwater had been convicted in 1982 on the basis of Sebold’s identification of him in court, as well as microscopic hair analysis via a method that is no longer considered to be accurate or admissible. The memoir Lucky tells the story of the crime, and how a then 18-year-old Sebold was raped and beaten within a tunnel near the campus of Syracuse University, where she was a student. At the time, Sebold was unable to identify her attacker, but months later she saw a black man on the street and became convinced that he was the man who attacked her. As she wrote in Lucky:

“He was smiling as he approached. He recognized me. It was a stroll in the park to him; he had met an acquaintance on the street. ‘Hey, girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ I looked directly at him. Knew his face had been the face over me in the tunnel.”