Picture: Lifetime
The Gabby Petito Story was added to Netflix in the United States on August 27th, 2025, several years after its premiere on Lifetime. It was only available for a few hours, though, and has now been removed without explanation. The dramatization is of the disappearance and murder that took place in the Bridger–Teton National Forest, Wyoming, in 2021. The movie, which runs for 1 hour and 27 minutes, premiered on Lifetime on October 1, 2022.
Updated Story August 28th:
While the movie was added, it has since been quickly removed – no removal notice was provided, and navigating to the page now redirects to the homepage.
The removal was spotted by many on Reddit, with one user writing, “I noticed that the movie is now removed after only being on the platform for less than 24 hrs. I paused it and came back to watch it and now it’s gone and I’m even getting errors whenever I click on the Netflix link for the movie. Anyone know why it was removed?”
Original story as follows:
The synopsis for the film reads, “The disappearance of Gabby Petito captured America’s attention, setting off a nationwide search for the 22-year-old travel blogger, when she failed to return home following her cross-country ‘van-life’ trip with her fiancé.”
The cast for the movie included:
- Skyler Samuels (The Gifted, Scream Queens) as Gabby Petito
- Evan Hall (Orange Is the New Black, Before I Disappear) as Brian Laundrie
- Thora Birch (Ghost World, American Beauty) as Nichole Schmidt
- Douglas Taurel (The Cobbler, Gravesend) as Joe Petito
- Monica Moore Smith (Dark Highway, Saturday’s Warrior) as Rose
- Matisha Baldwin (The Los Angeles Bakers, Undercover Bridesmaid) as Agent Shaw
- Samuel Whitten (Army Wives, The Inspectors) as Jim Schmidt
- Nikki SooHoo (Stick It, Bring It On: Fight to the Finish) as Miranda
- Aaron Groben (The Tall Tales of Jim Bridger, Criminal Minds) as John
The controversy for the film came almost immediately after the initial trailer was launched for it. Browsing through the comment section of the YouTube video embedded above (which, according to a third-party tool, suggests the trailer has a 3.5K to 20K dislike ratio), the bulk of the criticism lies in how quickly this movie came out, with the trailer releasing just a year after Gabby’s murder. “This is so disgusting. We don’t even know enough information about the story, and there are already scripts being written to play someone who just got murdered… let her family grieve in peace,” reads one comment.
Those criticisms continued after the movie’s release, with others criticizing the acting and its accuracy in portraying the details of the case.
This marks the first time the movie has been made available on an SVOD service following its initial airing on Lifetime. That said, the movie has been available as part of the Lifetime Movie Club ever since. This isn’t the only Lifetime movie Netflix has just acquired the license for in the United States. As we reported on earlier in the week, Devil on Campus: The Larry Ray Story is also hitting Netflix imminently.
Of course, the story will be relatively fresh in the minds of many Netflix viewers who caught the limited docu-series released in February of this year. That three-part docu-series was titled American Murder: Gabby Petito and debuted at number 1 on the Netflix charts following its initial launch. It involved the participation of Gabby’s parents, retelling the case in meticulous detail, and has been one of the biggest documentaries in Netflix history in entering the zeitgeist.
The docu-series ultimately spent four weeks in the global top 10s, picking up 105.3M viewing hours, equating to 49M views. According to the Netflix Engagement Report covering viewership from January to June 2025, the series was the sixth most-watched for the first half of the year, with 120.6M hours and 56.1M views.
Picture: Lifetime
For more on what’s still to come to Netflix throughout August 2025, keep it locked here on What’s on Netflix.
Will you be watching The Gabby Petito Story on Netflix upon its release? Let us know in the comments.
