Netflix lines up Jonestown massacre docuseries from Luminant Media

The Netflix doc will include interviews with survivors of the Jonestown massacre

Netflix has greenlit a documentary series examining the Jonestown massacre, the notorious 1970s mass murder of more than 900 people in Guyana.

The as-yet-untitled three-parter is produced by Luminant Media and directed by JM Harper (As We Speak) and follows the events leading up to the deadly event, including interviews with dozens of survivors and never-before-seen archive materials.

The Peoples Temple was a religious organisation led by the charismatic Jim Jones and billed as being a place for people who believed in racial equality, Christian teachings and socialist ideology.

It was founded in Indiana in 1955, before moving to California and then San Francisco. But as scrutiny and accusations of abuse grew, the Peoples Temple relocated to Guyana in the Caribbean, where Jones later forced his congregation to drink cyanide-laced punch, killing around 920 people.

Netflix said the docuseries will also feature first-hand accounts from Jones’s son, Stephan Jones.

Luminant Media is the LA-based production company behind Netflix’s Turning Point docuseries, which includes instalments titled The Vietnam War, The Bomb & the Cold War and 9/11 & the War on Terror. It has also produced projects such as The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, The Trials of Gabriel Fernández and Church & the Fourth Estate.

The project counts Brian Knappenberger, Harper, Rachel Libert and Clare Tucker among its executive producers. A release date has not yet been announced.