The British Academy Film & Television Awards, or BAFTAs, announced lists of the best films of the year. There aren't many crime dramas in the running, but multiple nominations were handed out to both the neo-noir psychological thriller Nocturnal Animals and the science fiction mystery film Arrival, as well as leading Oscar contenders La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, and Nocturnal Animals.
The Directors Guild of America announced awards for film and TV excellence in direction. On the film side, the honorees reflected the BAFTAs and Golden Globes already announced, while on the TV side, the crime drama nods included Ryan Murphy and John Singleton, both nominated in the Drama Series categories for episodes from The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story; Raymond de Felitta for Madoff; and Steven Zaillan for The Night Of.
MOVIES
The cast of Ocean's 8 is welcoming late night talk show host James Corden to the cast, playing an insurance investigator who grows suspicious of the ladies’ plan to mount a large-scale act of thievery in New York City. The all-star cast includes Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Sarah Paulson, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina, and Helena Bonham Carter.
Warner Bros. has released the first official trailer for CHiPS, a feature length comedic adaptation of the 1970s-80s NBC TV drama about motorcycle cop partners in the California Highway Patrol based out of Los Angeles.
TELEVISION
AMC and the BBC are re-teaming with The Ink Factory for a limited adaptation of another John le Carré bestselling novel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, with Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) set to write the adaptation. This is the first TV series treatment for the book, which was the basis for the 1965 Paramount feature film starring Richard Burton. Le Carré, who served as a writer along with Paul Dehn on the 1965 film, will also executive produce the TV project.
Marc Cherry, the creator of Desperate Housewives and Devious Maids, has landed ABC’s first pilot order of the season with an untitled project starring Reba McEntire. She'll play Ruby Adair, the sheriff of a colorful small Kentucky town, who finds her red state outlook challenged when a young FBI agent of Middle Eastern descent is sent to help her solve a horrific crime. Together they form an uneasy alliance as Ruby takes the agent behind the lace curtains of this Southern Gothic community to meet an assortment of bizarre characters, each with a secret of their own.
Lifetime has put in development the psychological thriller You, based on Caroline Kepnes’ best-selling novel of the same name. It is described as "a 21st century love story about an obsessive, yet brilliant twenty-something who uses the hyper connectivity of today’s technology to make the woman of his dreams fall in love with him."
Four days after TNT’s drama Good Behavior ended its 10-episode first-season run, the show has been picked up for a fall 2017 second season. The series, based on a series of books by Blake Crouch, tells the story of Letty Raines (Michelle Dockery), a thief and con artist whose life is always one wrong turn or one bad decision from implosion. Fresh out of prison, Letty tries to stay afloat but gets sucked back into the criminal world when she overhears a hitman being hired to kill a man’s wife and decides to derail the job, with the help of her parole officer (Terry Kinney).
Dakota Fanning is set as the female lead opposite Daniel Brühl and Luke Evans in TNT’s upcoming straight-to-series drama The Alienist, based on the international best-selling novel by Caleb Carr. The psychological thriller is set during the Gilded Age of New York City in 1896, where newly appointed police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt calls upon criminal psychologist (aka alienist) Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl)) and newspaper reporter John Moore (Evans) to conduct a secret investigation into a series of haunting, gruesome murders. Fanning will play a headstrong NYPD secretary named Sara Howard, who helps her colleagues investigate the murders.
Weeds alum Hunter Parrish has booked a major recurring role in ABC drama series Quantico, playing a political strategist forced to join forces with the CIA and FBI during the aftermath of the G20 hostage crisis.
Meredith Eaton (Boston Legal) has joined the cast of CBS’ MacGyver remake as a series regular, playing Matty Webber, the new director of operations at the Phoenix Foundation. Mac (Lucas Till) and the team, with the exception of Jack (George Eads), are excited to meet their new boss, who is known as a legend in Covert Ops.
Shots Fired, Fox’s 10-hour event series, will debut at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival. The show, from executive producers Gina Prince-Bythewood, Reggie Rock Bythewood, Brian Grazer and Francie Calfo, examines the dangerous aftermath of two racially charged shootings in a small Southern town.
Showtime president and CEO David Nevins revealed at the Television Critics Association winter previews that David Lynch's reboot of Twin Peaks will premiere with a two-hour episode Sunday, May 21 on Showtime, while a new trailer for the series was also released. The project picks up twenty-five years after the original Twin Peaks when the inhabitants of a quaint northwestern town were stunned after their homecoming queen Laura Palmer was shockingly murdered.
20th Century Fox TV is circling a revival of the Emmy-winning 1980s NBC legal drama L.A. Law, with original series co-creator Steven Bochco conceiving the project as set in 2016 Los Angeles and revolving around new characters (young lawyers), while also featuring several characters from the original series as bosses.
The X-Files sequel is closer to becoming a reality, according to Fox entertainment president David Madden, although many details need to be worked out before it actually comes to fruition. Fox chairman Gary Newman also commented on the fate of Wayward Pines, noting that it wasn't dead yet, but won't be returning this summer.
One show not closer to reality is the proposed TV adaptation of the 1987 movie Fatal Attraction (starring Michael Douglas and Glen Close), which has been shot down due to "casting issues."
The first trailer was released for Snatch, Crackle’s upcoming original scripted series based loosely on the 2000 Guy Ritchie-directed crime/comedy film of the same name. Set to premiere on Crackle on March 16, the 10 episode series (supposedly inspired by a real-life heist), stars Harry Potter's Rupert Grint and follows a group of twenty-something hustlers who stumble upon a truck load of stolen gold bullion and are thrust into the high-stakes world of organized crime.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Screenwriter Nina Sadowsky joined Alex Dolan on Thrill Seekers to discuss her first novel, Just Fall, which is currently being adapted for a series on the Starz network.
Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed three more women authors in the "Nasty Women of January: Female Crime Fiction Writer" series: Danielle Girard, the author of nine novels, including Chasing Darkness and Savage Art, as well as The Rookie Club series; Elizabeth Heiter, who writes a series featuring FBI profiler Evelyn Baine; and organized-crime thriller writer Dina Santorelli.
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