Monday means it's time for a look at recent crime drama news from stage and screen:
MOVIES
Millennium Films is teaming up with Gerard Butler for a third installment of the thriller series that began with Olympus Has Fallen, followed by London Has Fallen. To be titled Angel Has Fallen, the new film will see Butler reprise his role as Secret Service agent Mike Banning, only this time it's not the President who is the target, it's Banning himself.
Millennium Films has also snagged John Malkovich and Antonio Banderas to star in Unchained, a Reservoir Dogs-style thriller. They'll play career criminals who trap themselves in a warehouse with the law closing in and threats from an attack dog named DeNiro that leaves them fighting for their lives.
The very busy Millennium is also planning another Rambo reboot, this time minus Sylvester Stallone. Titled Rambo: New Blood (with Brooks McLaren penning the script and Ariel Vromen directing), the new reboot would not see Stallone return as the action hero like he did in Millennium’s 2008 outing, but would see a younger actor inhabit the role. The company is looking at Rambo as a character akin to James Bond.
Tom Hardy has signed to play the iconic American gangster Al Capone in the film Fonzo. The project centers on Capone in the final days of his life after being taken down by Eliot Ness and spending a decade in jail where dementia sets in - and his past becomes his present as harrowing memories of his violent and brutal life melt into his waking existence.
Casey Affleck is set to star in the vigilante thriller Villain, to be directed by Mikael Marcimain from a script he wrote. Set in a city overrun with crime. Affleck will play a man that loses everything after a brutal home invasion leaves his family dead and two bullets lodged in his head. He develops a unique power in the wake of his trauma — an ability to see into people’s pasts, presents, and futures — and goes on a mission of revenge to find the men who killed his family and clean up the city. But as his vigilante acts become more frequent and violent, the city’s new hero threatens to become its most prolific villain.
Kate Bosworth is attached to star in a film based on the Greg King book Sharon Tate And The Manson Murders, working with Bosworth's filmmaker-husband Michael Polish. The duo has worked together several times before in such films as 90 Minutes In Heaven and the psychological thriller Amnesiac.
Good Time, a crime drama starring Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Jason Leigh, has been picked up for distribution. The film follows a bank robber’s race to evade the police dragnet that threatens to send him behind bars.
Well Go USA has acquired rights in North America and some other territories to Buster’s Mal Heart, a psychological thriller starring Mr. Robot Emmy winner Rami Malek. The story follows a stable family man turned mountain hermit (Malek) who squats in empty vacation homes while on the run from the authorities. The film will hit theaters in early 2017, followed by a digital and home video release later in the year.
Olga Kurylenko has been tapped as the title character in the crime thriller Jane Millen, from writer/director Cynthia Mort. The project centers on Jane, who focuses on her job as a police detective to distract her from her family life spinning out of control. But her investigation into a murder case takes her down a rabbit hole, as affairs, jealousies and dark secrets emerge that threaten to consume her own private life.
Dan Krauss’ war documentary-turned-feature The Kill Team has landed Nat Wolff and Alexander Skarsgard to star. The story follows Private Adam Winfield, a soldier in Afghanistan who attempted to blow the whistle on members of his platoon who carry out a murderous scheme in the desolate wasteland of Southern Afghanistan. Wolff will play Winfield while Skarsgard has been cast as the fraternal and imposing Sergeant Deeks.
Paramount has snagged film rights to Ted Bell’s action espionage series of books based on British MI6 agent Sir Alexander Hawke, said to be in the same vein as James Bond and the Bourne Identity. Bell's books include nine bestsellers, and the hope is that the studio can spin them into a franchise movie series.
The third installment in the Sherlock Holmes films starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law has been having some trouble getting off the ground, but that may be changing. Warner Bros has assembled a writers room to "shape the script and story," with a team including Guardians of the Galaxy's Nicole Perlman, Baywatch's Justin Malen, Rogue One's Gary Whitta, Tomb Raider's Geneva Dworet-Robertson and Snowden's Kieran Fitzgerald. When we last left Sherlock Holmes in A Game of Shadows, he had just fallen into Reichenbach Falls with Professor James Moriarty, as that was the only way the detective could successfully eliminate his nemesis. However, in the movie's final minutes, moviegoers learned that Mr. Holmes had survived, though he wasn't ready to directly reveal to his best friend/partner, Dr. John Watson, that he was still alive.
John Wick co-director David Leitch is in talks to direct Deadpool 2 after the previous director, Tim Miller, left over creative difference with star Ryan Reynolds. Insiders say Reynolds was given more creative control on the sequel and that he clashed with Miller over casting, among other issues.
The official trailer is out for Focus Features' Nocturnal Animals, written and directed by Tom Ford (A Single Man) and based on the novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright. The noirish thriller stars Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal as exes with a complicated past who become involved in a symbolic revenge tale.
A first look promotional photo was released for Going Places that introduces John Turturro’s Jesus Quintana in the Big Lebowski spin-off film. It revolves around a three smalltime crooks and is being billed as an irreverent, sexually charged comedy.
TELEVISION
Sherlock Season 4 has finally been given its premiere date: January 1, 2017 in both the U.S. and the UK. The new episode, called "The Six Thatchers," may be based on the Conan Doyle story "The Six Napoleons," a story about Sherlock investigating six busts of Napoleon. Fans should be prepared to enjoy the next season, since Benedict Cumberbatch hinted that it may be a long time before the next installment because the next series will be "so dramatic fans might require a break from the show afterwards."
HBO has acquired US and Canadian rights to Cormoran Strike, BBC One’s limited series based on J.K. Rowling’s bestselling crime novels, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. British actor Tom Burke (War and Peace, The Musketeers) stars as the war veteran turned private eye in the series, which will air as three separate event series.
One of best-selling author Nelson DeMille’s most popular protagonists, John Corey, is headed to the small screen. ABC has given a script commitment plus penalty to John Corey, a drama series project based on DeMille’s book series about the brash, quick-witted, and cocky NYPD homicide detective as he returns to the force after being shot.
John Glenn (Allegiance) has teamed with Fast & Furious’ Justin Lin for The Evidence Room, a crime drama procedural that has landed at NBC with a put pilot commitment. The project centers on the investigations tied to objects in the Evidence Room, a secure area in a police station where evidence and seized property is stored. The items in the room will serve as engine for the stories to tackle a wide array of crimes and criminals.
ABC has trimmed the 13-episode first season of its new drama Notorious down to 10 episodes. The move is usually a sign that a show is effectively canceled, though the network has vowed to air all 10 episodes, and it could still be renewed for a second season. The drama stars Piper Perabo and Daniel Sunjata in the "provocative look at the unique, sexy and dangerous interplay of criminal law and the media."
Stana Katic is returning to television. The former Castle star is in final negotiations to play the lead in Absentia, a 10-episode straight-to-series crime thriller scheduled or a 2017 premiere on AXN’s worldwide channels, with Sony Pictures Television handling distribution in the U.S. Absentia centers on an FBI agent (Katic) an FBI agent who disappears without a trace while hunting one of Boston's most notorious serial killers. She's declared dead, but six years later, she's found in a cabin, barely alive and with no memory of the missing years. Returning home to learn her husband has remarried and her son is being raised by another woman, she soon finds herself implicated in a new series of murders.
The online video channel Machinima has announced it is actively developing a reboot of the 1980s action series Knight Rider with Justin Lin's online brand YOMYOMF and NBCUniversal Brand Development. The original program starred David Hasselhoff the crimefighting Michael Knight, who was paired with the one-of-a-kind (at the time) artificially intelligent Pontiac Trans Am named KITT, voiced by William Daniels.
CBS has put in development two new crime dramas: Under Suspicion, based on the bestselling crime thriller book series by Mary Higgins Clark featuring a justice-seeking investigative journalism team; and Sentinels, a drama from the team behind Scorpion that centers on the world’s worst news team who are actually involved with a secret government program.
Fox has given a script commitment to Token White Male, an hourlong dramedy procedural about a fun-loving, no-filter, low-rent lawyer who, against all odds, becomes the first male associate at a groundbreaking all-female law firm.
Fox has added a pair of actors to its upcoming limited series 24: Legacy, with Raphael Acloque and Themo Melikidze set for recurring roles. Acloque will play Jadalla "Jad" bin-Khalid, a bookish scholar who rejected his father’s politics while at university, but after his father’s death, Jad embraces his jihadist campaign. Melikidze is set as Khasan Dubayev, the intimidating brother of high school student Amira (Kathryn Prescott) who is intense and worried as he works with his sister in connection with their plans.
Fox also announced the long-awaited premiere date for Season 12 of Bones, now set for Tuesday, January 3. The final season is expected to provide some closure to the Booth and Brennan storyline, as well as for the other main characters who work at the Jeffersonian. The network has hinted that fans will experience a wedding, follow an epic serial killer storyline, go undercover in a lumberjack competition and see Booth and Brennan's marriage get put to the test.
The upcoming The Good Wife sequel series has added CSI veteran Paul Guilfoyle and Tony-winning actress Bernadette Peters in recurring roles. The Good Wife spinoff series will pick up one year after the events of The Good Wife series finale, when an enormous financial scam has destroyed the reputation of a young lawyer, Maia (Rose Leslie), while simultaneously wiping out her mentor Diane Lockhart’s (Christine Baranski) savings. Forced out of Lockhart & Lee, they join Lucca Quinn (Cush Jumbo) at one of Chicago’s pre-eminent law firms.
Fargo has added Jim Gaffigan as a series regular for season three of the FX series. The setting is rumored to take place in 2010 with Gaffigan taking on the role of Donny Mashman, a police deputy who works alongside Gloria Burgle (The Leftovers' Carrie Coon). The cast also includes Ewan McGregor playing the dual roles of brothers Emmit and Ray Stussy and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as a crafty and alluring recent parolee.
White Collar alum Tim DeKay has been tapped for a recurring role on the upcoming third installment of John Ridley’s ABC anthology drama series American Crime, playing a relative to Cherry Jones’ character. Season 3 will explore labor issues, economic divides and individual rights in North Carolina.
The first trailer was released for HBO's Big Little Lies with its all-star cast of Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Alexander Skarsgård, Adam Scott, Zoë Kravitz, Kathryn Newton, Shailene Woodley, and James Tupper. The limited series is the brainchild of David E. Kelley and is based on Liane Moriarty’s 2014 novel that centers on three mothers (Witherspoon, Kidman, Dern) of first graders whose apparently perfect lives unravel to the point of murder.
PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO
Michigan Public Radio spoke with author Dennis Lehane about crime novels, race in America, and researching history.
NPR's "alt.latino" program explored the world of Latino noir, featuring crime fiction writer Carmen Amato.
CBS This Morning welcomed John Grisham to talk about his latest legal thriller, The Whistler.
THEATER
Walnut Creek, California's Center Repertory Company is presenting Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery by Ken Ludwig, based on the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, through November 19. The play, which premiered last year at Washington D.C., Arena Stage, is a comedic take on Doyle's book, in which the intrepid investigators "try to escape a dizzying web of clues, silly accents, disguises and deceit as five actors deftly portray more than 40 characters."
GAMES
The sci-fi crime story Invisible was originally envisioned as a graphic novel but has turned into a 360-degree virtual reality project. It's a scripted tale of sci-fi corporate treachery involving the wealthy and ruthless Ashland family, whose grip on the global economy has been clinched by certain family members' ability to make themselves invisible and wage mischief with this tactical advantage.