Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D star Clark Gregg is set to appear in the Simon Kaijer-directed thriller Spinning Man, along with Guy Pearce, Pierce Brosnan, Minnie Driver, and Odeya Rush. The film is based on George Harrar’s novel, which Matthew Aldrich adapted. The story centers on Evan (Pearce), a philosophy professor and family man whose past reveals a number of illicit relations with his students. When a young woman is found murdered, he becomes the prime suspect. Gregg will play Paul, a lawyer who helps Evan sort out the legality of his relationship with his students.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Steve Zaillian has been attached to rewrite the Fox thriller Dark Web, updating previous drafts penned by Joel and Ethan Coen and Dennis Lehane. The project follows the true story of a 29-year-old idealist named Ross William Ulbricht (a/k/a Dread Pirate Roberts) who built an online illegal-drug marketplace called "The Silk Road," and along the way allegedly became a murderous kingpin.

Charlize Theron shows some of her badass assassin moves in an extended clip for the upcoming Atomic Blonde. The spy thriller is based on writer Antony Johnston and illustrator Sam Hart's graphic novel The Coldest City, which follows MI6’s most lethal assassin (Theron) sent to deliver a priceless dossier in Berlin with the help of embedded station chief David Percival (James McAvoy), only to get caught up in a web of international intrigue and deception.  

Fox studios released a trailer of Kenneth Branagh starring as the iconic Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in Fox’s upcoming adaptation of the Agatha Christie classic Murder On The Orient Express. Branagh directs an ensemble cast including Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, Josh Gad, Judi Dench and Olivia Colman for a reboot of the much-loved whodunit.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival runs from June 21st until July 2nd with a total of 151 features from 46 countries and multiple special events. Among the crime dramas being screened are the action-packed crime thriller Operation Mekong; filmmaker Justin Edgar’s noir British thriller The Marker; the Toby Jones-starring psychological thriller Kaleidoscope; the Irish Medieval thriller Pilgrimage; the French cop comedy R.A.I.D Special Unit; the true-life thriller Hostages; the taut Icelandic thriller The Oath; the psychological horror-thriller The Dark Mile; and an International Premiere of Katarzyna Adamik’s thriller Amok. Author Ian Rankin will also be on hand to present the crime drama Reichenbach Falls.

TELEVISION

UK-based indie Eleventh Hour Films has optioned the screen rights to Anthony Horowitz’s bestselling Alex Rider novels. BAFTA winner Guy Burt is attached to script a large-scale family series based on the Horowitz's YA books that chart the adventures of a reluctant teenage super-spy on his missions to save the world. Eleventh Hour is currently developing the project with ITV.

AMC is developing three shows via the network’s "scripts-to-series" model that skips the pilot process and instead appoints groups of writers to develop a first season bible and write several episodes, after which AMC decides whether to grant a straight-to-series order. The shows include NOS4A2 (pronounced "Nosferatu"), which follows Victoria McQueen, a woman with a secret gift for finding things, who sets out to locate a superhuman kidnapper and rescue his victims. It's based on the novel by Joe Hill that was a New York Times bestseller and won the 2013 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. One of the other script-to-series projects is Pandora, a global mystery-thriller tracking three converging storylines about ordinary people piecing together dark secrets after advanced malware dismantles encryption across the Internet.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's father Stanley Johnson’s satirical thriller about political "skullduggery," Kompromat, is to be adapted for a Channel 4 TV series. The thriller imagines the behind-the-scenes shenanigans in the run-up to the European Union Referendum and the US presidential campaign. Kompromat is the Russian term for compromising materials about a politician or other public figure.  

Cinemax has canceled the crime series Quarry after one season. Co-creator Michael D. Fuller announced the news on Wednesday in a blog post entitled "Goodbye Cruel World." Fuller co-created the show (along with Graham Gordy) that's based on the novel series by Max Allan Collins and follows a Marine who returns home from Vietnam in 1972 and is drawn into a string of nefarious actions in his hometown of Memphis.

Dale Soules, a recurring guest since Season 2 as no-nonsense inmate Frieda Berlin, has been promoted to series regular for Season 6 of Orange is the New Black.  Frieda, who boasts neck tattoos and knows a lot about murder, acknowledged in a previous season that she committed a crime. Season 5 which takes place over three days, begins streaming Friday, June 9 and sees the inmates at Litchfield in control and empowered to fight for justice following Poussey’s (Samira Wiley) death that sparked the riot at the end of Season 4.

NBC has tweaked its fall schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders is now slotted for Tuesday at 10 pm, while Chicago Fire will be in the 10 pm slot on Thursdays. Meanwhile, the peacock network also announced it has cast the elder Menendez brother in the form of Young and the Restless actor Miles Gaston Villanueva.

HBO released the first trailer for its upcoming drama The Deuce, which stars James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal in the burgeoning NYC porn industry in the 1970s and '80s. The eight-episode drama, which debuts Sept. 10, was created by detective fiction novelist George Pelecanos and The Wire creator David Simon.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

On a recent BBC podcast, Bridget Kendall explored the life and work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in a discussion with biographer Andrew Lycett and the scholars Catherine Wynne and Stefan Lampadius.

Kathleen McFall and Clark Hays and Kendra Elliott were the guests on Suspense Radio's Inside Edition yesterday. McFall and Hays are the authors of the book Bonnie and Clyde: Resurrection Road, while Elliott is the creator of A Merciful Truth, her latest book featuring FBI agent Mercy Kilpatrick.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste welcomed special guest Angela Clarke, the Sunday Times bestseller who spills all about social media, the fashion industry, and how to get into crime writing.

For a fun change of pace, the Writer Types podcast put a panel of crime writers including Christa Faust, Glen Erik Hamilton, and Danny Gardner to the test in the first Crime Quiz Live!  

THEATER

Beginning June 16, the Park Square Theater in Saint Paul, MN, is staging Might As Well Be Dead: A Nero Wolfe Mystery, adapted from the novel by Rex Stout. The world premiere commission by the theater's Mystery Writers Producers’ Club takes on Stout's story about a wealthy St. Paul businesswoman who hires to Wolfe to find her estranged son to make amends. But what if the young man doesn’t want to be found? And what if he’s the same Paul Herrold on trial for murder? The case draws the great detective and his devoted sidekick into a web of deceit – one that even the master sleuth may regret taking on.