D.B. Cooper Doc Series Parachutes Onto Netflix As Fulwell 73 Moves Into True-Crime
Netflix is hoping to solve the legend of D.B. Cooper, the mystery man who hijacked a Northwest Airlines passenger jet in November 1971 and escaped with $200,000, never to be seen again.
The streamer has ordered D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?! from Fulwell 73 Productions and director Marina Zenovich’s PMZ Pictures.
The four-part doc series, which launches on July 13, marks the first true-crime project for Fulwell 73, which is best known for producing The Late Late Show with James Corden and Hulu’s The Kardashians.
The series looks at the 50-year quest to find Cooper, whose identity remains one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century and the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation history.
There have been multiple suspects in the case over the years including the possibility that Cooper was a Boeing employee, that he was former WWII paratrooper Kenneth Peter Christiansen, former leather worker and Korean War vet Lynn Doyle Cooper or recreational pilot and librarian Barbara Dayton, who underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1969.
The FBI officially suspended the active investigation in 2016 and all of the evidence, which includes three pieces of evidence found on the plane – a clip-on tie, a mother-of-pearl tie clip and eight cigarette butts, is open to the public.
The series includes interviews with celebrated Cooper investigators and focuses on the ten-year quest by one of them, Tom Colbert, to prove that he has found D.B. Cooper. Colbert, the author of The Last Master Outlaw, has previously said that he believes retired pilot and ex-convict Robert Rackstraw was Cooper.
The doc also includes contributions from Jonna Mendez, ex-CIA Chief of Disguise, Geoffrey Gray, author of Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper, and Bryan Burrough, author of Days of Rage and Public Enemies.
Emmy Award-winner Marina Zenovich, who recently directed HBO Max cult series The Way Down, directs with a creative team that also includes Emmy Award-winner composer Blake Neely, and Emmy Award-winner graphic designer EJ Kang, who has worked on The Morning Show and Game of Thrones.
It is a co-production between Fulwell 73 Productions and PMZ Pictures with Leo Pearlman and Sheldon Lazarus exec producing for Fulwell 73 and P.G. Morgan and Zenovich exec producing for PMZ Pictures.
“I’m excited to bring the D.B. Cooper story to the world,” said Zenovich. “It’s an all-American adventure with many bizarre twists and turns and I’m honored to have worked on it with such a world class creative team.”
Pearlman added, “Marina, P.G., Blake and EJ have produced a stylish, original and most importantly fun series that Netflix viewers will really want to dig into.”
