Lifetime channel rushes to film new ending for Andrew Luster TV movie

LOS ANGELES (AP) Fugitive rapist Andrew Luster's capture by bounty hunters in Mexico this week has sent the cast and crew of a cable TV movie on the Max Factor heir's life scrambling to stitch together a new ending.

The film, scheduled to debut Aug. 11 on the Lifetime channel, stars Jason Gedrick of NBC's ``Boomtown'' as Luster. Marla Sokoloff of ABC's ``The Practice'' portrays one of the three women he was convicted of attacking.

The movie was originally set to wrap next Wednesday in Vancouver, Canada, but shooting will be extended at least one day, said executive producer Larry Thompson.

``I've got my hair and makeup people trying to find a goatee. This guy was certainly not a master of disguise,'' Thompson said by phone Thursday.

Luster, 39, had grown a goatee but otherwise looked little different when he was taken into custody Wednesday than he did when he disappeared during his trial last January.

As additional details of Luster's capture in Puerto Vallarta surface, Thompson said, ``Our writer is writing and rewriting, our locations are changing and we are trying to figure it out as we go.''

He said he didn't know how much the changes would add to the film's budget.

Gedrick said Luster's actions ``confirm choices'' he had made in portraying the fugitive as someone for whom ``a crime of impulse escalated to a crime of habit.''

Learning that Luster had gone to a Mexican hotel where he had stayed before and visited nightclubs frequented by tourists only strengthened Gedrick's impression that this was someone who ``obviously wasn't really thinking things through.''

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)