Here's the latest in news of crime dramas on stage and screen:
MOVIES
Jeff Bridges has signed to star in David Mackenzie’s Comancheria, potentially joining Chris Pine and Ben Foster, who are currently in talks to board the project. The story follows two brothers—one an ex-con and the other a divorced father of two—who go on a bank-robbing spree following a farm foreclosure that puts them on a collision course with a Texas Ranger (Bridges).
Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill are all circling a yet-to-be-titled dramatic film about the 1996 bombing of Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, in which Richard Jewell, a security guard, was falsely implicated as the primary suspect.
Filmmaker Ron Mann has produced a documentary on the films of director Robert Altman. Although Altman is best known perhaps for his movie MASH, he also was behind such crime dramas as Gosford Park and The Long Goodbye.
TELEVISION
Netflix has ordered a new original drama that is a mystery-themed series set in Long Island and billed as a "love letter to the '80s classics." The series centers around the disappearance of a boy in Montauk, Long Island, in 1980 and is said to have supernatural elements.
The third series of Endeavour, the Inspector Morse prequel, is currently in production at ITV. Shaun Evans will return as the young Inspector Endeavour Morse, who was last seen framed for a murder he did not commit. No date has been set for the premiere.
Law & Order: SVU alumni Dann Florek and Andre Braugher are returning to the NBC drama for one episode, which sees Ellis (Braugher), an attorney for Project Innocence, taking on the case of a man who is in jail for raping his daughter after she recants her testimony. Cragen (Florek), now retired, returns to help re-open the case and provide evidence that could change the outcome.
TNT announced a slate of ten shows this summer, including new episodes of returning shows Rizzoli & Isles, Major Crimes, Murder in the First, Legends, and the real-life investigation series Cold Justice. The new shows making their debuts include the 1960s-set police drama Public Morals, from writer, director, and star Edward Burns and exec producer Steven Spielberg, and Cold Justice: Sex Crimes, the first spinoff of TNT's Cold Justice.
FX renewed its spy series The Americans for a fourth season. The critically-acclaimed show stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as husband-and-wife KGB spies.
Barbara Walters is returning to Investigation Discovery for a six-part series in which she will reveal personal stories and never-before-seen footage from her coverage of crimes committed by Jean Harris, Jim Bakker, Mark David Chapman and others. ID also announced other new programs including Serial Thriller and Death By Gossip.
CBS set season finale dates for its various shows, including Scorpion, Blue Bloods, Person of Interest, Criminal Minds, Hawaii Five-0, the NCIS franchises, CSI: Cyber, and Elementary.
THEATER
The touring company of Bullets Over Broadway announced the stops for their road schedule, including 25 cities in their first season. Bullets Over Broadway, written by Woody Allen and based on the screenplay by Allen and Douglas McGrath for the 1994 film of the same name, centers on an aspiring playwright who finds out that his play is getting the Broadway treatment thanks to a wealthy gangster who has taken a sudden interest in producing.
The Route 66 Theatre Company announced its 2015-16 season that will include three Chicago premieres, including Cops and Friends of Cops by Ron Klier. The play features five men, three police officers, a bartender and a customer, who all end up in a bar on a night designated for off-duty cops and have to "wrestle with regret, loss, racism and their masculine identity in a constantly changing contemporary America."
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