MADE UP: Tania Raymonde plays Jodi Arias (inset) in a Lifetime version of her murder case that filmed while the trial was still on. (
)
Not that long ago, the publishing industry called them “instant books” — produced within a few weeks of a sensational crime that hit stores before the body was cold.
Lifetime — which specializes in movies about passionate crime — is trying a TV version with a film about convicted murderer Jodi Arias that will be on TV just six weeks after her conviction.
“There will probably be people who are upset because we are not portraying her as a monster,” says Jace Alexander, director of “Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret.”
“But you will not see a crazy person, because I don’t really think Jodi was one.
“If she had never met Travis Alexander or gotten as jealous as she did, I don’t know that this woman would have ever done anything violent in her entire life.”
The director — who made ripped-from-the-headlines episodes of “Law and Order” for 10 years — calls the Arias film “a love story . . . a one-sided love story.
“For me, the facts [of the crime] weren’t nearly as interesting as their relationship,” he tells The Post.
Travis Alexander’s body was discovered at his Mesa, Ariz. home in June 2008. His throat had been slit. He’d been shot and stabbed 27 times.
Arias (played in the movie by Tania Raymonde from “Lost” and “Malcolm in the Middle”) was convicted May 8 of first-degree murder.
Six days later, the movie completed filming.
Multiple versions of key scenes were filmed to allow for how the trial might end.
But the movie — set to premiere June 22 — contains fewer than 10 minutes of courtroom scenes.
“Millions of people have spent countless hours poring over the fine details of what came out in the trial,” Alexander says, acknowledging that the case became a cable-news phenomenon after cameras were allowed in.
“What they haven’t spent much time dealing with — and what our movie addresses — is what happened when these two people met, what happened when they were alone and what was their relationship based on.”
Alexander says he never contacted Arias and paid little attention to the trial itself.
He and his writers developed their own theories of “what may have happened behind closed doors.”
“I have nothing but the utmost respect for Travis Alexander and his family,” the director says.
“But at the same time, I feel bad for Jodi, too.
“I know if she could do it all over again, she would take it back.”