Just two months after Luigi Mangione allegedly assassinated United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, HBO's MAX is already prepared to launch a new one-hour documentary. The film (apparently called Who is Luigi Mangioni? despite the alleged shooter spelling his last name with an "e") "aims to unpack Mangione's background and track his trajectory to understand what led him to land behind bars."
The trailer (above) features appearances from everyone that Investigation Discovery could possible scramble to assemble for an interview in such a short period of time. Curiously, this includes indicted New York City mayor Eric Adams, who famously perp-walked Mangione for absolutely no apparent reason.
Perhaps the only thing more absurd than frantically assembling a documentary about such a massive case in under two months is the fact that this isn't even the first Mangione-related documentary to come out. ABC News already beat MAX to the punch with an hour-long special focused on the manhunt for Mangione—a finite event with at least enough factual information that one could logically produce a dramatic play-by-play. This new MAX documentary, however, looks like it really really wants you to think that it's a remarkable deep-dive into the mind of a killer, in the tradition of The Jinx from the network's HBO-branded days. Based on the two-minute clip above, though, Who is Luigi Mangioni? presents itself as little more than propaganda—a desperate play to establish a narrative about Mangione before a trial that hasn't even started yet. In fact, the documentary is slated to premiere on February 17, which is the same day the trial is currently scheduled to begin.
Maybe MAX and Investigation Discovery are banking on that Big Event curiosity to drive viewers to their documentary. But how much insight could it really offer with such little time and effort?
I think we all know the answer.
