Monday means it's time for the latest news of crime dramas on the air, stage and screen:
MOVIES
STX Entertainment is in final negotiations with Captain America filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo to make 17 Bridges, written by Adam Mervis and described as "Inside Man meets The Fugitive." The thriller follows a disgraced detective in the NYPD who undercovers a massive conspiracy linking his fellow cops to a criminal empire and must decide who he is hunting and who is actually hunting him. During the manhunt, Manhattan is completely locked down for the first time in its history – no exit or entry to the island including all 17 bridges.
Warner Bros and Safehouse Pictures have tapped William Eubank to direct and Underground’s Joe Pokaski to write the feature film Count, a contemporary retelling of Alexandre Dumas' revenge tale classic The Count Of Monte Cristo that will be set in the criminal underworld.
Soldado, the sequel to 2015's Sicario, is moving forward with Stefano Sollima the front-runner to direct the second installment. The sequel will once again focus on Alejandro Gillick, the shadowy protagonist (Benicio Del Toro) and CIA agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who in the first film established themselves as hellbent on hunting down cartel kingpins, no matter what. However, the principled FBI agent character, played by Emily Blunt, will not be returning for the follow-up.
Cinestar Pictures, the production company run by Zoe Saldana and her sisters Cisely and Mariel, are joining with producer-director Leslie Owen and her Owen Media Group to produce Gone Missing, a documentary investigating the epidemic of more than 4,000 documented cases of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls of Canada.
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has been hired to star in the film Doc Savage, directed by Shane Black. The 1930s pulp classic was inspired by notable literary and pulp heroes such as Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan and featured the adventuring polymath who was trained from early childhood to be at peak physical condition and is blessed with genius level intellect and an eidetic memory, abilities he uses to right wrongs and correct injustice wherever he happens to encounter them.
Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett is circling a role in the all-female reboot of Ocean's Eleven, joining the previously announced Sandra Bullock in the cast. Neither woman is playing a gender-swapped version of Clooney or Pitt, but rather the roles are loosely modeled after the dynamic in Soderbergh’s films.
The upcoming political thriller Drone has added Mary McCormack and Joel David Moore to the project, joining Sean Bean and Patrick Sabongui. The story follows Neil (Bean), a high-level private drone contractor who divides his time between his work flying covert drone missions and suburban family life. His worlds collide when a leak causes a Pakistani businessman (Sabongui) to believe Neil is responsible for the death of his family, sparking a tense confrontation in Neil’s house. McCormack will play Neil’s wife, while Moore portrays Neil’s colleague.
A new poster and trailer were released for the upcoming heist thriller Marauders starring Bruce Willis as a bank owner and Christopher Meloni, Dave Bautista, and Adrian Grenier as FBI agents. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)
TELEVISION
Showtime has closed a deal for a 20-episode order for the drama series Purity, headlined by James Bond star Daniel Craig and based on the book by Jonathan Franzen. The story centers on Pip, a young American woman who does not know who she is, and Andreas Wolf, a charismatic German provocateur (Craig) who heads a South America-based organization trafficking in all the secrets of the world where Pip gets an internship in search of her identity. Purity will begin production in 2017 and will air in two installments over the course of two years.
The NBC News Peacock Productions division signed a deal with Denise Brown, sister of the late Nicole Brown Simpson, to develop an unscripted true-crime series. Since the trial of her infamous brother-in-law, OJ Simpson, who was accused of Nicole's murder, Denise has traveled the country speaking about domestic violence and working to help pass legislation to protect victims.
HBO has given a series order to Barry, its half-hour comedy hitman pilot starring, co-written, and directed by Bill Hader in the Saturday Night Live alum’s return to television. Barry centers on an ex-Marine who works as a low-rent hitman in the Midwest. Lonely and dissatisfied in his life, he begrudgingly travels to Los Angeles to kill someone and ends up finding an accepting community in a group of eager hopefuls within the LA theater scene.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
In the most recent Crime and Science Radio podcast, Jan Burke and Dr. Doug Lyle interviewed prominent forensic scientist Jay Jarvis, who has over 35 years of experience in working in the field.
A new Meet the Thriller Author podcast is up, featuring a conversation with Renée Pawlish, the award-winning author of the bestselling Reed Ferguson mystery series.
Tracy Mumford tried to answer for Minneapolis Public Radio the question of "What is 'grip lit' and why is it so popular?"
The latest Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine podcast featured A Department of First Stories tale, "Chung Ling Soo's Greatest Trick" by Russell W. Johnson (which went on to win the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award for best short story by a new American author).
THEATER
The Broadway adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho closed on June 5, barely a month after it opened to mixed reviews. Although it proved to be more successful with the original cast on the London stage, Ben Brantley wrote for the New York Times that the Broadway production "suffers from the weight of having to be a big Broadway musical," and "panders to audiences who are presumably partly made up of the affluent, heat-seeking souls it parodies." (Not to mention having to compete with the juggernaut known as Hamilton.)
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