A new trailer has been released teasing the upcoming TV mini-series “Under the Bridge,” which is based on the November 1997 murder of Victoria-area teen Reena Virk.
The eight-episode series, set to premiere on streaming platform Hulu, is inspired by late author Rebecca Godfrey’s book of the same name and tells the story of Virk, “who went to join friends at a party and never returned home,” reads the synopsis.
It highlights the teen’s disappearance, murder and the investigation that followed, and is “based on shocking true events,” the trailer reveals.
Vritika Gupta stars as Virk, Riley Keough as Godfrey and Lily Gladstone as a local police officer. According to details on Hulu’s website, the series will take viewers “into the young girls accused of the murder — revealing startling truths about the unlikely killer.”
Keough is the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley, while Gladstone is best known for her role in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” for which she was recently nominated for an Academy Award.
“Keough and Gladstone were handpicked by book author and series producer Rebecca Godfrey for their roles before her death from cancer in 2022,” reads a trivia page on IMDb.
It was in 1997 when Virk, 14, was brutally beaten and drowned by a group of mostly teen girls near the Craigflower Bridge in Saanich.
When the beating stopped, Virk limped away. But she was followed by 15-year-old Kerry Sim, previously known as Kelly Ellard, and 16-year-old Warren Glowatski, who beat her again before Sim held Virk’s head under the water and watched her drown.
Virk, a Colquitz Middle School student, died on Nov. 14, 1997. It was eight days later, on Nov. 22, when police found her partially clothed body washed ashore at the Gorge Inlet.
READ ALSO: Day parole extended for Kelly Ellard, woman convicted of killing Victoria’s Reena Virk
Glowatski was convicted of second-degree murder with a life sentence in 1999 before being released in 2010. Sim, now a mother of two, was convicted of second-degree murder with a life sentence in 2005.
She was later granted day parole in 2017.
At the time, Virk’s mom, the late Suman Virk, said she was disappointed Sim was on parole.
“She could have taken responsibility a long time ago and saved us the pain and agony of, first of all, going through three different trials and waiting for 20 years to finally have some acknowledgement of her guilt,” she told CHEK News in 2017 before her death a year later.
She and her husband, Manjit, had travelled around Canada to speak with high school students and help schools develop anti-bullying programs.
Saanich Mayor Dean Murdock was in high school at the time of Virk’s murder and recalls the incident, saying it really rocked the community.
“The idea that something this serious and fatal could happen here was really very upsetting,” Murdock told CHEK News Tuesday.
“So I’d imagine for a number of folks, it will surface a lot of those feelings and will perhaps be something quite challenging when they think about the events that took place nearly 30 years ago.”
ABC Signature produced “Under the Bridge,” which was filmed in the Vancouver area between December 2022 and April 2023.
The first episode, titled “Looking Glass,” is set to be released on April 17. Hulu is not available in Canada, but the series will stream on Disney+ sometime in the future.
“A Canadian premiere date has not been confirmed yet,” Walt Disney Studios Canada told CHEK News.
Ethan Morneau
