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Netflix has greenlit a new three-episode installment of its Italian original “The Monster of Florence,” the serial killer series directed by genre specialist Stefano Sollima. The first four-episode chapter launched
from the 2025 Venice Film Festival before dropping on the streaming giant, where it rapidly rose to the top of Netflix’s global non-English-language shows chart.
Shooting is underway on what is being described as “a new chapter in Italy’s most famous true crime case” that “will revisit the Monster of Florence investigation through a new lens.”
The true crime show’s title is the moniker given to the alleged serial killer, who committed eight double murders over the course of 17 years from the late 1960s to the mid-’80s, preying on couples parked in cars in secluded places around Florence. “The Monster of Florence” always used the same weapon: a .22 caliber Beretta.
The first “Monster of Florence” season delved into the initial line of 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 in time, investigators believed was the killer. This new chapter now expands the narrative surrounding the Monster of Florence case by focusing on the so-called “Snack Buddies” lead. In particular, it focuses on the figure of Pietro Pacciani, a Tuscan farm worker who was convicted in 1994 for seven of the eight double murders. His conviction was overturned on appeal in 1996, and he then died in 1998 before his retrial. Pacciani is described in the statement as “figure as scrutinized by the media as he was shrouded in mystery” in what remains one of the longest-running and most controversial criminal investigations in Italian history.
“We always imagined ‘The Monster of Florence’ as an anthology series: standalone stories, each dedicated to one of the different suspects in the series of crimes that shocked Tuscany and Italy between the 1970s and 1980s, in what has gone down in history as the ‘Monster of Florence’ murders,” Sollima said in the statement, noting that the investigation lasted over 30 years.
“After focusing on the Sardinian suspects, this time we leap forward in time to address perhaps the most well-known, controversial, and debated chapter of the entire incident: the story of Pietro Pacciani, convicted and later acquitted of the crimes, and his alleged accomplices, the infamous ‘Snack Buddies,’ as the press dubbed them,” he added. It’s a court case that divided Italian public opinion for decades, Sollima went on to point out. “Perhaps this is also why Pacciani’s case remains the most disturbing: guilt has never been proven, but also never completely ruled out,” he concluded.
The limited series reunited Sollima with writer Leonardo Fasoli and ace Italian cinematographer Paolo Carnera, both of whom Sollima worked with on “Gomorrah” and cocaine trafficking drama “ZeroZeroZero.” Sollima has also helmed Hollywood movies such as “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” and “Without Remorse.”
The new chapter in “The Monster of Florence” saga is being produced by Wildside, a Fremantle company, and Sollima’s AlterEgo production shingle. The producers are Sonia Rovai, Gina Gardini, Sollima and Lorenzo Mieli.
