Netflix has greenlit a new three-episode version of Italian original The Monster of Florence, a serial killer series directed by genre specialist Stefano Sollima. The first chapter of the four-episode series started at the 2025 Venice Film Festival and landed on streaming giant Netflix, where it quickly rose to the top of Netflix’s global non-English programming charts.
Described as “a new chapter in Italy’s most famous true crime case” that “revisits the investigation into the Florentine Monster through a new lens”, filming is underway.
The true crime show’s title is the nickname given to an alleged serial killer who committed eight double murders over a 17-year period from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, targeting couples in cars parked in secluded areas around Florence. The “Monster of Florence” always used the same weapon, the .22 caliber Beretta.
The first season of “Monsters of Florence” delved into the early stages of a police investigation known as “The Sardinian Lead,” with each of the show’s four episodes telling the story of a man who, at one point, investigators believed was the murderer. This new chapter focuses on the main characters, the so-called “Snack Buddies”, and develops a story surrounding the events of the Monster in Florence. In particular, it focuses on the character of Pietro Pacciani, a Tuscan farm worker who was convicted in 1994 of seven of eight serial murders. His conviction was overturned on appeal in 1996, and he died in 1998 before a retrial could begin. In a statement, Pacciani was described as a “mysterious figure who has been scrutinized by the media” in one of the longest-running and most controversial criminal investigations in Italian history.
“We always envisioned The Monster of Florence as an anthology series, each standalone story dedicated to a different suspect in a series of crimes that shocked Tuscany and Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, a case that went down in history as the Monster Murders of Florence,” Sollima said in a statement, noting that the investigation spanned more than 30 years.
“After focusing on the Sardinian suspects, we now take a leap forward in time to cover perhaps the most well-known, controversial and controversial chapter of the entire case: the story of the convicted and later acquitted Pietro Pacciani and his alleged accomplices, the infamous ‘snack buddies’ as the press called them,” he added. Sollima went on to point out that this is a case that has divided Italian public opinion for decades. “Perhaps this is also why the Pacciani case remains the most worrying: guilt has never been proven, but it has also never been completely ruled out,” he concluded.
The limited series reunites Sollima with screenwriter Leonardo Fasoli and ace Italian cinematographer Paolo Carnera, both of whom Sollima worked with on Gomorrah and the cocaine trafficking drama Zero Zero Zero. Sollima has also directed Hollywood films such as “Sicario: The Day of the Soldado” and “The Day of No Regrets.”
The new chapter in the “Monster of Florence” saga is being produced by Fremantle company Wildside and Sollima’s AlterEgo production company. Producers are Sonia Rovai, Gina Guardini, Sollima, and Lorenzo Mieri.
