Here's the latest roundup of crime drama news on screen and on the air:
MOVIES
20th Century Fox has acquired the feature rights to Agatha Christie’s classic mystery And Then There Were None and hired The Imitation Game's Morten Tyldum to direct. The novel follows ten strangers invited for a weekend on Soldier Island only to realize they were brought there under false pretenses and are being bumped off one by one for crimes they committed. The Wrap also had some fun speculating on which actors should be hired for the various roles.
Jared Leto and Chris Evans are in talks to play the lead male roles in the film adaptation of the novel The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Evans will play the ex-husband of the couple, and Leto will play a neighbor, whose wife has gone missing after it's discovered that she was having an affair.
The Jack Reacher sequel starring Tom Cruise in the title role has found its villain, according to Tracking Board, which reported that Patrick Heusinger has now joined the cast as the bad guy.
Adrian Grenier will co-star with Bruce Willis, Christopher Meloni, and Dave Bautista in Marauders, a Steven C. Miller-directed action thriller. The film focuses on an FBI agent, on the trail of bank robbers who give the stolen loot to charity, who discovers the trail of secrets that a bank’s owner has protected.
Matt Damon teased some plot points for the next Bourne film, hinting that the fifth installment in the franchise will unravel previously unanswered questions. “[Bourne] has his memory back, but that doesn’t mean he knows everything. It’s 12 years since Jason Bourne has been on the grid. So we have to answer the questions, Where’s he been? What’s he doing? What gets him going again? So once we solved all that, then we had a movie.”
The thriller MI-5, based on the hit UK series export, will be getting a theatrical release in North America this December. Starring Game of Thrones' Kit Harington and MI-5 vet Peter Firth, the project tracks the hunt for an escaped terrorist, leading MI-5 agent Will Holloway (Harington) to team up with his former mentor, disgraced MI-5 Intelligence Chief Harry Pearce (Firth), to catch the terrorist before he commits a devastating attack in London.
Liam Neeson will continue his string of suspense-thriller films with his next movie, The Commuter, scheduled to begin filming in New York next spring. Written by Byron Willinger and Phil de Blasi, the project centers on a business executive (Neeson) on his daily commute home who unwittingly gets involved in a criminal conspiracy that threatens not only him but people close to him.
Maggie Gyllenhaal has signed on to The Deuce, David Simon's upcoming HBO drama about the rise of the porn industry in New York City in the 1970s and '80s. She'll play Eileen Merrell, aka "Candy," a Times Square prostitute. Gyllenhaal is also producing along with James Franco, who is starring as twin porn kingpins.
Fox Searchlight is moving forward with the true story drama The Man Who Got American High, based on an article in Narratively by Jeff Maysh. The project is based on the true story of Alfred Dellentash Jr., a pilot and music producer who flew acts like the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead in lavish private jets but was also one of the key drug smugglers in Pablo Escobar’s empire.
As the Double O Section blog reported, lucky Londoners will be able to enjoy the event of a lifetime next month when Dame Diana Rigg does an on-stage Q&A following a screening of the classic Avengers episode The House That Jack Built, one of a pair of classic Emma Peel episodes screening on October 25 at BFI Southbank.
TELEVISION
Author Tom Clancy's CIA hero Jack Ryan has been the the subject of a movie franchise, and now he's heading to the small screen. Former Lost co-showrunner Carlton Cuse and writer Graham Roland are spearheading the project, which won't be a direct adaptation of the novels but rather a "new contemporary take on the character in his prime as a CIA analyst/operative, using the novels as source material."
The latest TV reboot appears to be The A-Team, as 20th Century Fox Television teams up with Fast & Furious writer-producer Chris Morgan to create a contemporary take on the 1980s series. Sleepy Hollow executive producer Albert Kim has been hired to pen the script and original The A-Team creator Stephen J. Cannell's TV-director daughter, Tawnia McKiernan, is also attached to the project. Like the original (and the movie adaptation), the show will revolve around a diverse team of American special-forces operatives, although the new team would include both male and female members.
TNT has given a pilot green light to Robbers, a project based on Christopher Cook’s 2000 debut novel. Described as "being in the literary-noir tradition of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men, Robbers tells the story of a cop, two running buddies on a crime spree across Texas, and the girl who becomes the complication in a strange love triangle.
Televisa USA is producing an English-language version of the popular Spanish series, Gran Hotel, an English-language adaptation of the popular Spanish series. The setting for the mystery drama is being shifted from 1905 Spain to pre-Castro Havana, with a focus on a man who's led on a dangerous journey that takes him to the opulent Gran Hotel, a frequent getaway for the rich, powerful, famous and infamous, in the search for his missing sister.
BBC Director-General Tony Hall and BBC One chief Charlotte Moore ordered a raft of new dramas including Rush Of Blood, adapted from the Mark Billingham novel by Matt Charman (also behind Steven Spielberg’s Bridge Of Spies). The three-part drama focuses on three couples who return from a holiday in Florida and realize one of them must have been responsible for a murder.
Another of the BBC's upcoming slate includes The Cormoran Strike Mysteries based on Robert Galbraith’s (aka JK Rowling’s) best-selling novels The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm, and the yet-to-be-published third novel in the series, Career of Evil. The contemporary series focuses on war veteran turned private detective, Strike as he investigates crimes with his female assistant Robin.
Law & Order: SVU is adding Broadway actor Andy Karl as Sgt. Mike Dodds, the son of Deputy Chief William Dodds (guest star Peter Gallagher). He will serve as No. 2 to acting commander Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay).
Tim Matheson and Camila Banus have landed roles in the FX drama pilot Snowfall, directed by John Singleton. The project is set in the early 1980s at the beginning of a crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles and focuses on three main characters: ambitious dealer Franklin Saint (Damson Idris), ex-Mexican wrestler and now gangster Gustavo Zapata (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) and prodigal son Logan Miller (Billy Magnussen). Matheson will play Logan’s father, while Banus will play the daughter of a very successful drug dealer.
The Crime Fiction Ireland blog has a roundup of the crime dramas, both new and returning, on BBC One this fall.
BBC One released the first glimpse of Hugh Laurie as Establishment arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper, Tom Hiddleston as undercover man Jonathan Pine, Elizabeth Debicki as dream girl Jed, and Olivia Colman as drug enforcement agent Burr in the upcoming miniseries The Night Manager, based on a novel by John le Carré. AMC will broadcast the show at some point in 2016.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
NPR's Diane Rehm welcomed Martin Walker to her show to discuss The Patriarch, the latest in his France-set series featuring Bruno, Chief of Police.
J.A. Jance spoke with Seattle's public radio station KUOW about her 50+ novels and how she became a writer.
In the latest Crime and Science Radio podcast, author Hank Phillippi Ryan turned the tables on host Dr. D.P. Lyle, quizzing him about thriller series, the Royal Pains media tie-in novels, and his consulting work with novelists and the writers of popular television shows.
A new Speaking of Mysteries podcast featured Rhys Bowen discussing how the work of Tony Hillerman inspired her to write the Constable Evan Evans series.
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