Home · Entertainment · Sep 30 archive
How to Watch ‘Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos’ on Investigation Discovery Without Cable
Confirmed
In Short: Investigation Discovery's 'Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos' uses AI to make actress Morag Peacock look like the serial killer.
Investigation Discovery (ID) is premiering a new three-part docuseries, 'Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos,' which uses advanced AI technology to recreate the likeness of serial killer Aileen Wuornos.
The series, produced by Arrow Media and streaming on HBO Max, employs a digital mask technique to transform actress Morag Peacock into Wuornos, using a three-dimensional model built from archival video and photographs.
Kyran Speirs, head of post-production at Arrow Media, explained to Deadline that the AI-assisted mask captures Wuornos from every angle, creating a seamless visual representation.
The docuseries, which premieres on Wednesday, September 4, 2026, back-to-back-to-back, delves into Wuornos's killings of seven men in Central Florida in 1989 and 1990, and her time on death row.
Viewers can watch the series live via DirecTV, Philo, Sling, or Hulu + Live TV, with free trial options available.
Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns both ID and HBO Max, is putting a synthetic face on a real killer for both its cable and streaming audiences.
When the on-screen Wuornos repeats her real-life statements, viewers will see a composite of three sources: the actress, the digital mask, and the original Wuornos.
Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos' is the latest in a long line of true crime examinations of Wuornos, who has been the subject of numerous films and documentaries over the past three decades.
What's confirmed
- The 2026 docuseries Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos deployed an AI-mask tool to make actress Morag Peacock look exactly like the serial killer.
What's still developing
- Wuornos, who was working as a sex worker, killed seven men across Central Florida in 1989 and 1990 and claimed they had raped or tried to rape her.
- It goes back over the killings of seven men in Central Florida, the investigation that ended with her arrest and her years on death row, using first-person accounts from Wuornos, from people close to her and from the investigators who worked the case.
- Wuornos has been filmed, dramatized and re-examined for more than three decades, and Arrow Media itself already made Aileen Wuornos: Mind of a Monster for the same network.
- Other people in the story are also played by actors whose likenesses were digitally replicated, and the Wuornos layer includes a replicated voice.
- If you want to tune in, you don’t need a cable subscription.