Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile: Zac Efron shares photo of himself as Ted Bundy in upcoming serial killer thriller

Efron, 31, plays the serial killer in a thriller set to premiere in January 2019 at the Sundance Film Festival

Zac Efron attends the Australian premiere of The Greatest Showman at The Star on 20 December, 2017 in Sydney, Australia. ((Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images))

Zac Efron has shared the first close-up photo of himself as Ted Bundy in an upcoming thriller.

The actor, 31, can be seen in the image, posted on Thursday on his Instagram account, in a blue suit and printed tie – a timely outfit to play the serial killer, who was active in the Seventies and executed in 1989.

Efron's still seems to have been taken from a courtroom scene. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile tells the story of Bundy from the perspective of his real-life girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer​ (Lily Collins).

The actor previously shared a time-lapse video showing the hair and make-up team working to make him look more like Bundy.

Collins has posted a still of film in which she and Efron are celebrating a child's birthday, with Efron taking a large knife to the birthday cake.

Back in January, Efron shared a first image of himself as Bundy.

The photo, taken from afar, shows him posing for a mug shot.

Jim Parsons also stars in the movie, set to premiere in January 2019 at the Sundance Film Festival, as prosecutor Larry Simpson.

Bundy killed at least 30 women across the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Florida.

True crime author Ann Rule, who once worked with Bundy before he was revealed to have committed multiple murders and rapes, wrote in her 1980 book The Stranger Beside Me that he "was never as handsome, brilliant, or charismatic as crime folklore has deemed him".

She explained that she had received letters from women around the world claiming to "love" the killer, and likened him to "the American Jack the Ripper, the real Dracula" in the collective imagination – before describing him as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims".