Monday means it's time for the weekly round-up of crime drama news:
AWARDS
At the Academy Awards ceremony last night, the biographical crime drama Spotlight was named Best Picture and won for best Original Screenplay (Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy); Brie Larson won Best Actress for her performance in Room; Leonardo DiCaprio won Best Actor for The Revenant and the film's helmer, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, also won Best Director honors; and Mark Rylance took home Best Supporting Actor statue for the Cold War spy thriller Bridge of Spies. It was also good to see 85-year-old composer Ennio Moricone win his first Oscar for Best Musical Score for The Hateful Eight after "only" several hundred movies throughout his long career.
MOVIES
Fresh off of the wild success of Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds has already chosen his next project. He and co-stars Salma Hayek, Elodie Yung, Samuel L. Jackson, and Gary Oldman have joined The Hitman's Bodyguard, about the best protection agent in the world (Reynolds) assigned to a hit man (Jackson) who have to endure each other's company as they encounter a ruthless Eastern European dictator (Oldman) determined to bring them down.
The Thomas Crowne Affair is getting remade again (following the previous 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo). Creed's Michael B. Jordan is in talks to play the role of the wealthy businessman who conducts robberies on the side until an insurance investigator tracks him down and the two begin an affair even as Crown plans another heist.
TELEVISION
Fox announced it's giving Bones a final chapter with a 12-episode farewell 12th season. Stars David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel have closed deals to return as the series’ leading duo of Booth and Brennan, and showrunners are Jonathan Collier and Michael Peterson will also be returning. Collier and Peterson added that "Knowing there is a Season 12, we can now write the most rewarding Season 11 finale possible – one we hope will leave our fans excited for what’s to come in this final season of Bones.”
Fox also announced its literary adventure drama Houdini & Doyle will premiere May 2, taking over the 9 PM Monday slot that the week after Lucifer's season finale. The series focuses on the unlikely real-life friendship between master illusionist Harry Houdini (Michael Weston) and Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Stephen Mangan) as they grudgingly join forces with New Scotland Yard to investigate unsolved and inexplicable crimes with a supernatural slant. Rebecca Liddiard plays Adelaide Stratton, whose character is the first female constable ever to work for the London Metropolitan Police Force.
Royal Pains leading man Mark Feuerstein is set for a major recurring role opposite returning stars Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell in Fox’s Prison Break sequel event series. Feuerstein will play Scott Ness, the husband of Dr. Sara Tancredi, the character played by Sarah Wayne Callies on the original series. Callies is in talks to reprise her role in the follow-up — one of several Prison Break fan favorites in discussions to return along with Robert Knepper, Rockmond Dunbar and Amaury Nolasco.
Jimmy Smits is set to co-star opposite Corey Hawkins and Miranda Otto in 24: Legacy, Fox’s drama pilot, which reboots the 24 franchise with brand new characters and cast. The reboot chronicles military hero Eric Carter’s (Hawkins) return to the U.S. and the trouble that follows him back – compelling him to ask CTU for help in saving his life, and stopping what potentially could be one of the largest-scale terror attacks on American soil. Smits will play John Donovan, a powerful U.S. Senator with higher political aspirations.
Conor Leslie is set to co-star opposite Sanaa Lathan in Fox event series Shots Fired, with Manny Perez on board in a recurring role. The project examines the dangerous aftermath of racially charged shootings in a small Tennessee town as seen through the eyes of a government aide (Leslie) who works directly for the governor. Perez will recur as James Ruiz, who works at the Department of Justice.
Demi Moore is returning to TV for her first major role in 20 years, starring in the drama 10 Days in the Valley from Rookie Blue co-creator Tassie Cameron. She will play Jane Sadler, an overworked writer and single mother in the middle of a tumultuous separation, and when her 5-year-old daughter is taken from her bed in the middle of the night, Jane must put everything on the line — including her TV show, her loyalties and her deepest and darkest secrets — to get her child back.
Bill Paxton will play one of the bad-cop leads in CBS’ drama pilot Training Day, a present-day re-imagining of Antoine Fuqua’s acclaimed 2001 feature that starred Denzel Washington as a rogue narcotics detective and Ethan Hawke as his rookie cop partner. Set 15 years after the film left off, the TV show gives the dynamic of the characters a twist: an idealistic young African-American police officer is appointed to an elite squad of the LAPD where he is partnered with seasoned, morally ambiguous detective Frank Rourke (Paxton).
Felix Solis and ER alum Anthony Edwards are set for roles in Drew, CBS’ drama based on the Nancy Drew character from the classic mystery book series. Drew is described as "a contemporary take on the character from the books, with Nancy, now in her 30s, working as a detective for the NYPD where she investigates and solves crimes using her uncanny observational skills, all while navigating the complexities of life in a modern world." Edwards will play Carson, Nancy’s father who graduated at the top of his class at Yale Law, and Felix Solis will play Lieutenant Ford, who moved to NY after his wife died under suspicious circumstances. He was a person of interest but never charged. He left all that behind and tries to forget his past by burying himself in work. Also recently added to the cast: Graceland alumna Vanessa Ferlito will play George, an NYPD homicide detective and Nancy’s former partner on the force who has an innate ability to put other people at ease.
Showtime’s Ray Donovan has cast Pasha Lychnikoff in a recurring role that of a Russian gangster wanted by the L.A.P.D. Last season, Ray (Liev Schreiber) learned "that clean slates are a dirty business, but what doesn’t kill a Donovan only makes him stronger. "Jon Voight, Paula Malcomson, Eddie Marsan, Dash Mihok and Stephen Bauer also star on the drama series.
Adam Davidson is set to direct Fox’s drama pilot Recon from Warner Bros TV. Written by The Vampire Diaries exec producer Caroline Dries, Recon is about a rookie FBI agent (Tracy Spiridakos) who embeds herself in a suspected terrorist family.
A fourth series of Endeavor, the prequel to Inspector Morse, will go in to production later this Spring. Shaun Evans will return to the 1967-set series, which will again be written entirely by Russell Lewis, who devised the series (based of course on both the original novels by Colin Dexter’s as well as the earlier TV show too).
Amazon has canceled the drama series Mad Dogs after one season, according to the show’s showrunner and executive producer, Shawn Ryan, who was also the creator of the FX drama The Shield. Mad Dogs centers on a group of longtime friends on a tropical vacation who find themselves ensnared in a world of crime and murder and was adapted from the U.K. series of the same name.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Authors Megan Abbott and Sarah Weinman participated in a discussion with NPR's Steve Inskeep about how publishers commonly promote books by comparing them to other books, sometimes the same books over and over again - most recently the "girl" books such as Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.
Joe R. Lansdale, author of Hap and Leonard mystery series, the basis for a Sundance TV series that begins March 2, joined Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air program.
The latest Crime and Science Radio podcast was titled "Follow the Money: Catching Cheaters, Frauds and Con Artists" and featured an interview with Securities Fraud Investigator Richard B. York.
Crime fiction author and former horse breeder Sasscer Hill chatted with mystery author Debbi Mack about her two mystery series, including one to be released by St. Martin's Press, and her other writing, on Crime Cafe.
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