Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to another Monday and a new roundup of the latest crime drama news:

MOVIES

Scott Free Films and New Sparta Films are teaming up for Neither Confirm Nor Deny, the true story of the CIA secret mission to recover a nuclear Soviet submarine three miles under the Pacific Ocean. The project is based on the David H. Sharp book, The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation. 

In what will be his first big film for Warner Bros since the 2008 Best Picture nominee Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy is in final talks to write and direct an untitled thriller based on a project that has been at Warner Bros 15 years. That thriller (wt Methuselah) was originated by James Watkins and most recently had Tom Cruise attached to star as a man who has managed to survive for 400 years without showing the physical signs of age. In that time, he has accumulated vast intellectual knowledge, from multiple languages to the sciences, as well as survival skills.

Oscar winner Jeff Bridges is set to star in Drew Goddard’s thriller Bad Times at the El Royale, with Chris Hemsworth in talks to join him. The story is set in the 1960s at a crappy motel near Lake Tahoe in California with Bridges playing a down-on-his-luck priest named Father Daniel Flynn. The cast is also slated to eventually include "a vacuum cleaner salesman, two female criminals, a male cult leader, a desk clerk and an African-American singer."

Sophie Nélisse, Eoin Macken and Game Of Thrones' Indira Varma have been added to the cast of Close, the action thriller that stars Noomi Rapace. Loosely based on the experiences of Jacqui Davis, one of the world’s leading female bodyguards, the pic centers on Sam (Rapace) a close protection officer used to battlefield conditions who is hired to protect Zoe (Nélisse), a rebellious heiress to a billion-dollar company. When a violent kidnapping attempt forces them to go on the run, the women form an unlikely bond, and with the help of Sam’s ex-partner Conall (Macken) work together to clear their names and uncover their enemies. Varma plays Zoe’s stepmother.

Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage has signed on to star in Between Worlds, a supernatural thriller directed by Spain-based filmmaker Maria Pulera. Franka Potente (The Conjuring 2), Penelope Mitchell (Hemlock Grove) and Garrett Clayton (Hairspray Live!) also co-star in the film, which will shoot in Alabama and Sweden. Written by Pulera, the story follows Joe, (Cage), a down-on-his-luck truck driver haunted by the memory of his deceased wife and child. He meets Julie (Potente), a spiritually gifted woman who enlists Joe in a desperate effort to find the lost soul of her comatose daughter, Billie (Mitchell). But the spirit of Joe’s dead wife Mary proves stronger, possessing the young woman’s body and determined to settle her unfinished business with the living.

Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman are coming back for the Equalizer sequel to co-star alongside Denzel Washington for Sony Pictures and director Antoine Fuqua. Leo and Pullman are set to reprise their roles as Susan and Brian Plummer, the great friends of Robert McCall (Washington) when he worked in counter-terrorism. 

New Line founder Robert Shaye has picked up the low-budget thriller Nightlight at Sony’s Columbia Pictures, with Tyler MacIntyre directing the screenplay MacIntyre co-wrote with Chris Hill. The plot for the movie is being kept under wraps.

Freestyle Digital Media acquired domestic rights to Don’t Sleep, a thriller written and directed by Rick Bieber that stars Dominic Sherwood, Cary Elwes, Drea de Matteo, Charlbi Dean Kriek and Jill Hennessy. The pic also marks the final onscreen performance from Alex Rocco (Moe Green in The Godfather), who died in 2015 of cancer at 79. The film centers on two lovers (Sherwood and Kriek) who move into a guesthouse on an estate owned by Mr. and Mrs. Marino (Matteo and Rocco). When bizarre events begin to occur with increasing danger, the young couple must confront the horrors of a forgotten childhood. 

Screen Gems has acquired the Peter A. Dowling action spec script Exposure (working title) about a rookie African-American female cop in Detroit who rounds the corner just as corrupt officers are murdering several drug dealers, an event captured by her body cam. They try to kill her, and she is hunted throughout the night by the narcs who are desperate to destroy the incriminating footage and also a criminal gang who have been told she did the killing.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

In a competitive situation, Sony Pictures Television and Neal Moritz’s Original Film have optioned Adam Sternbergh’s The Blinds to develop as a TV series. The thriller novel, by the Edgar Award-nominated author of Shovel Ready, was published by HarperCollins on August 1 and is set in a place populated by criminals—people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who’ve been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don’t know if they’ve perpetrated a crime or just witnessed one. What’s clear to them is that if they leave, they will end up dead.

The 1970s buddy cop series Starsky & Hutch is eyeing a TV return with a reboot shepherded by The Guardians Of the Galaxy franchise writer-director James Gunn. Sony Pictures TV Studios is behind the revival series project, which is currently being pitched to broadcast, cable and streaming networks with multiple parties interested. Described as a character driven one-hour procedural, the new Starsky and Hutch will be written by James Gunn as well as his brother Brian and their cousin Mark who often work as a writing tandem.

ABC has put in development a drama from former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark, writer-producers Elizabeth Craft and Sara Fain (The 100), ABC Studios and studio-based Mandeville TV. Penned by Clark, Craft and Fain, the untitled project is described as "part legal thriller, part confessional, part revenge fantasy." It centers on a female prosecutor who loses the trial of the century and is shredded by the media in the process. The drama chronicles what happens when 8 years later the murderer who got off strikes again.

CBS TV Studios is developing a drama series based on the hot Israeli drama format Your Honor (Kvodo). The U.S. adaptation, eyed for premium cable and streaming networks, is from the creators of two acclaimed legal drama series, Peter Moffat, whose BAFTA-winning Criminal Justice was the basis for HBO’s praised limited series The Night Of, and The Good Wife's Robert and Michelle King. Written by British TV writer/playwright Moffat, Your Honor follows the son of a respected judge who involved in a hit and run. Soon after they are both drawn into a high stakes game of lies, deceit and impossible choices when it comes to light that the victim was the son of a notorious crime boss.

Quantico creator Josh Safran has lined up his next series project, a legal drama at CBS. Written by Safran, the drama centers on a high-powered corporate attorney who joins the Texas legal team defending her wealthy estranged husband after he is arrested for the decades-old unsolved murder of his first wife.

Blindspot creator/executive producer Martin Gero and executive producers Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter have teamed for an untitled legal family drama written by Gero and Blindspot co-executive producer Brendan Gall for CBS. The drama revolves around five multi-racial adopted siblings who fight for justice in the courtroom amid wildly different legal careers as they delve into the mystery of a family tragedy that exposes the sins of their father.

Edward Burns’ Marlboro Road Gang Productions is teaming with Radar Pictures to develop bestselling author Tosca Lee’s The Progeny as a television series. Lee’s genre-bending books bring a modern twist to an ancient mystery surrounding Elizabeth Báthory, the 16th-century countess known as the world’s most notorious female serial killer. 

BBC One has set new dramas, including The Victim, a contemporary legal thriller told through the eyes of the plaintiff and the accused. BBC One has also ordered a factual drama from Jeff Pope, an Oscar nominee for Philomena, and Neil McKay, The Barking Murders (w/t), which will shed new light on the families of the victims of convicted serial rapist and killer Stephen Port who is serving a life sentence after murdering at least four men. 

British actor Ben Whishaw will be joining Hugh Grant in the three-part BBC One drama A Very English Scandal. Grant will play disgraced British politician Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party in 1979 who was accused of conspiring to murder his ex-lover Norman Scott, Whishaw’s role. Thorpe became the first British politician in modern times to go to trial for murder. Davies is adapting the book by British journalist John Preston, and the drama will be directed by Stephen Frears, director of The Queen.

Channel 4 has ordered the six-part period espionage epic, Jerusalem, written and created by Bash Doran. This is the Boardwalk Empire writer’s first original commission for British television and is set in the aftermath of WWII, when Britain was struggling to define itself in a new world order.

ABC has given a put pilot commitment to Romeos & Juliets, which centers on a badass, tough-as-nails female CIA operative who is forced to partner with a handsome, self-absorbed agent from the CIA’s elite "Romeo and Juliet" division — agents who are trained to use sex and charm to keep America safe.

The Season 2 trailer for BBC America’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Agency was released, which more deeply explores the fantasy genre. 

Epix has ordered a 10-episode second season of the original series Get Shorty for premiere in 2018. The series is based in part on Elmore Leonard’s 1990 bestselling novel and follows Miles Daly (Chris O’Dowd), a hitman from Nevada who tries to become a movie producer in Hollywood with the help of a washed-up producer, Rick Moreweather (Ray Romano), as a means to leave his criminal past behind. The cast also includes Sean Bridgers, Lidia Porto, Megan Stevenson, Lucy Walters and Carolyn Dodd.

A trailer was released for Strike--The Cuckoo's Calling, the BBC One series adapted from J.K. Rowling's first novel (writing as Robert Galbraith) in the Cormorant Strike series starring Tom Burke as Cormoran Strike, with Holliday Grainger as his assistant Robin.

PODCASTS

Bestseller David McCaffrey joins Alex Dolan on Thrill Seekers. McCaffrey is the author of the Hellbound series of books, with the debut voted one of W H Smith's Most Underrated Crime Novels of 2014.

T. Jefferson Parker joined KPBS radio to talk about the first novel in his new private eye series, The Room of White Fire.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime fiction author Seth Harwood on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Anthony Nominated Author, Eric Beetner, who has been described as "the James Brown of noir," is on the Menu at The Blue Plate Special.