Here's the latest roundup of crime drama news:
MOVIES
Wolf of Wall Street producer Red Granite is developing a remake of the prison drama Papillon with Danish director Michael Noer attached to helm the project and Aaron Guzikowski (who wrote Denis Villeneuve's 2013 thriller Prisoners) penning the script. The original 1973 film, based on the autobiography by the French convict Henri Charriere, starred Steve McQueen as a criminal unjustly convicted of murder and condemned to life in a South American prison, with Dustin Hoffman playing a counterfeiter who agrees to finance his prison escapes in exchange for protection.
Saban Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to writer-director Adam Alleca’s Standoff, a thriller starring Laurence Fishburne and Thomas Jane, with an early 2016 release. Jane plays a troubled veteran who gets a chance at redemption by protecting a 12-year-old girl from a vicious assassin (Fishburne) after she witnesses a murder.
STX Entertainment acquired North American rights to the immigration thriller Desierto, written by Gravity's Jonás Cuarón and starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The story follows a group of would-be immigrants whose dream of entering the U.S. turns into a desperate fight for their lives when a deranged vigilante begins stalking and preying upon the group as they trek across the harsh Sonoran Desert.
Keanu Reeves hinted at a few details about the sequel to the 2014 vengeance thriller John Wick, where Reeves played a hitman pulled out of retirement by criminals who steal his car and kill his dog. The follow-up film will apparently deal more with Wick's past and how it "comes and infiltrates John’s life and John Wick, in a way, has to fight for John."
A rebooted Danger Mouse series premiered just last month, and producers are apparently eyeing a big screen debut for the world’s smallest secret agent. The animated "origin story" will look into the agent so secret that his codename has a codename and who also happens to be a mouse living underneath MI6 headquarters.
TELEVISION
Tired of reboots yet? If not, you're in luck! CBS is teaming with Grey's Anatomy alums Joan Rater and Tony Phelan for a Nancy Drew TV series, with a catch: now in her '30s, Nancy is a detective for the NYPD where she investigates and solves crimes using her uncanny observational skills.
Continuing the age-reversal theme, CBS had put in a development order for a series based on Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Only she’ll be recast as a much younger woman who inherits her grandmother’s old small town book store in California and solves cases in a mystery-of-the-week type format.
Steven Soderbergh's 2011 action thriller Haywire (that starred Channing Tatum and Gina Carano), is also getting a small-screen adaptation. The original story starred Carano as a secret agent on a revenge spree after her agency betrayed her.
Tandem Productions has optioned Ken Follett's 2000 novel Code to Zero to be adapted as a limited series, set in the present day rather the original story's 1958. The story centers on a man who awakens to find himself lying on the ground in a railway station with amnesia and rediscovers his entire life through detective work, uncovering secrets of a conspiracy behind a battle for global space supremacy between the U.S. and China.
CBS has given a 13-episode straight-to-series order to the murder mystery drama American Gothic, from writer Corinne Brinkerhoff (Jane The Virgin) and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin TV. The story centers on a prominent Boston family trying to redefine itself in the wake of a chilling discovery that links their recently deceased patriarch to a string of murders spanning decades — amid the mounting suspicion that one of them may have been his accomplice.
UK-based Catalyst Global Media is partnering with John Woo and his L.A.-based team for the crime thriller Cognition. The eight-part series, based on an original idea by Alex Garcia Lopez (Utopia, Misfits), is described as a neo-noir and follows two serial killer investigations set in stylistically contrasting worlds — the vast and desolate lands of America’s declining Midwest, and the thriving and overpopulated streets of the Far East.
ABC picked up the legal drama Conviction, co-created by Liz Friedman (Elementary), who will write the project, and Liz Friedlander (The Following), who is attached to direct the potential pilot. The project follows a brilliant but rebellious daughter of a political family who is forced to take a job as head of LA's newly created Conviction Integrity Unit and has two weeks (along with her team of lawyers, investigators and forensic experts) to examine cases where there’s credible suspicion the wrong person may have been convicted of a crime.
Cinemax ordered an adaptation of Skin Trade, a so-called "werewolf noir" novella written by Game Of Thrones’ George R. R. Martin back in 1988. The story centers on on Willie Flambeaux, "a collections agent who happens to be a werewolf, and his friend, Randi Wade, a private investigator, who discover a dark secret behind a series of grisly murders in their decaying industrial city."
Showtime is adding another famous face to its all-star revival of the cult series Twin Peaks in the form of Peter Sarsgaard, who joins Amanda Seyfried, Balthazar Getty, and Robert Knepper, as well as original series lead Kyle MacLachlin.
It's no surprise that NBC’s Blindspot, the fall season’s top-rated new series in adults 18-49, has become the first freshman series to get an increased episode order pickup, bringing its first-season order to a full-season 22 episodes. The crime drama centers on Jane Doe (Jaimie Alexander), a woman with no memories whose tattooed body holds the key to her past and to a vast and complex mystery. Sullivan Stapleton co-stars as FBI special agent Kurt Weller, the leader of an elite FBI unit investigating the woman's case. It was also just announced that The Borgias alum Francois Arnaud has booked a recurring role on the series playing a mysterious character from Jane’s distant past.
Boardwalk Empire alum Stephen Graham is set to star in USA Network’s supernatural procedural pilot Brooklyn Animal Control, based on the IDW Publishing comic created by JT Petty, with Brian Kirk (Game Of Thrones) on board to direct the pilot. The story follows the inner workings of a secret subdivision of the NYPD that functions as social services for some of the city’s most unique citizens — werewolves. In the center of it all is John Crean (Graham), an officer of the BAC who is well-acquainted with the small community of werewolves to which he plays cop, counselor, and diplomat.
Lusia Strus (50 First Dates) and Terry Kinney (Show Me A Hero) have been cast opposite Michelle Dockery and Juan Diego Botto in the TNT drama pilot Good Behavior. The project is based on the Letty Dobesh books by Wayward Pines author Blake Crouch centering on a female thief and con artist.
NCIS is bringing back Tony DiNoz's ex, Scottie Thompson, who will return in November for a possible multi-episode arc. She first appeared in Season 4 as Jeanne, a doctor and the daughter of an arms dealer, who developed a relationship with Tony that turned complicated when she learned Tony was an NCIS agent set to take down her father.
Gracepoint alum Kevin Rankin has joined the cast of Fox’s drama series Lucifer as a regular. The project centers around Lucifer (Tom Ellis) who, bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell, resigns his throne to get his kicks helping the LAPD punish criminals. Rankin will play Malcolm Graham, a decorated detective with an ends-justify-the-means approach to the law
The Twin Peaks mini-series has recast a major role, that of Sheriff Harry Truman. Michael Onktean, who played the character in the original series, has retired from acting and declined to reprise his role. The current rumors are that Robert Forster (Heroes, Karen Sisco) will take his place.
The BBC dropped a new trailer for the Victorian Sherlock special starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
The FBI is joining Crime and Science Radio to discuss Biotechnology and BioSynthetic WMDs. Part 1 was this Saturday (October 10) and Part 2 will air on October 24.
Jeff Cohen was the guest on Debbi Mack's Crime Cafe podcast this week, chatting about his Asperger's mysteries and other crime fiction series.
The latest Speaking of Mysteries podcast featured John Katzenbach talking about his new thriller, Dead Student.
The new Crime Vault podcast hosted by Mark Billingham and Michael Carlson includes an interview with the brilliant Val McDermid; a discussion on franchise novels or "when is a Bond not a Bond?"; reviews of new releases including The Crossing by Michael Connelly, Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell and Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Anna Waterhouse; plus there is a review of classic audio title Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh, listener questions and much more.
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