Monday means it's time once again for the latest weekly roundup of crime drama news:
MOVIES
20th Century Fox bought the film rights to Taylor Adams' thriller, No Exit, with Logan scriptwriter Scott Frank attached to produce. The story follows college student Darby Thorne, who gets stranded in a blizzard at a highway rest stop for a night with four strangers. During the night, Thorne discovers a little girl locked in the trunk of one of the cars but she doesn’t know whose car. Without cell or phone reception and trapped by the snow, she must figure out who is the kidnapper.
Production has begun in New Orleans on Carol Morley’s crime drama Out Of Blue, which stars Jacki Weaver, James Caan, Patricia Clarkson, and Toby Jones. Billed as a neo-noir detective story and metaphysical mystery, the story centers on homicide detective Mike Hoolihan (Clarkson) who is called to investigate the shooting of a leading astrophysicist and black hole expert, and is affected in ways she struggles to comprehend. The film is originally based on Martin Amis’ novel Night Train, although the script penned by Morley has "taken on its own life." Aaron Tveit, Mamie Gummer, Yolanda Ross, Jonathan Majors and Devyn A Tyler round out the cast.
Naomi Watts has been set to star in The Wolf Hour, a psychological thriller from writer-director Alistair Banks Griffin. The project centers on June Leigh (Watts), a cultural icon and activist during the 1960s, now fallen from grace and a shell of her former self. An unseen tormentor begins exploiting her weaknesses and she must face her demons at the height of one of the darkest points in New York history: the summer of the the Son of Sam murders.
Brenton Thwaites (Oculus) and Ben Robson (The Boy) have signed on as the leads in the crime thriller A Violent Separation. The story is set in a quiet Midwestern town where Norman (Thwaites), a young deputy sheriff, covers up a murder at the hands of his older brother, Ray (Robson), but neither of the young men are prepared for what’s to come, including the passionate romance that blossoms between Norman and the victim’s younger sister, Frances (Alycia Debnam-Carey). As the investigation wears on, family bonds are tested with everyone desperately trying to do the right thing, all while doing the wrong thing.
Komixx Entertainment Ltd has optioned the worldwide screen rights to the "electrifying" YA thriller Captured by Kelly Anne Blount, featured on Wattpad. It is the second novel the independent production company has optioned from the author, the first being Under in 2016. Captured follows 17-year-old Abriana Vega who ends up blindfolded in a trunk of a car during a first date with a man she met online.
Melanie Liburd, who co-stars on Netflix’s Gypsy, has been set to join the cast of Brian Banks, a biopic starring Aldis Hodge and Greg Kinnear. The project tells the story of Banks (Hodge), an All-American high school football player committed to USC whose life was upended in 2002 when he was falsely accused of rape. Despite maintaining his innocence, Banks was railroaded through the system and sentenced to a decade of prison and parole. Kinnear plays his lawyer, while England-born Liburd will play Karina, a personal trainer Banks meets at the gym. After freaking out when he reveals he was accused of rape, she eventually believes in his innocence and helps clear his name.
A new trailer for Hangman features Al Pacino playing a detective chasing down a serial killer who likes to play a twisted version of Hangman. The pic also stars Karl Urban as profiler Will Ruiney.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
ABC has put in development an hourlong gumshoe/family drama from Mila Kunis’ Orchard Farm Productions, Grey’s Anatomy executive producer William Harper, and ABC Studios. Written by Harper, the untitled project centers on a housewife who feels invisible to her husband and shunned by her teenage daughter but finds new purpose and confidence when she becomes the indispensable protégé of the sexy private investigator who moves in next door.
CBS is planning a reboot of Magnum P.I., an update of the classic 1980s Tom Selleck series set in Hawaii, which hails from Peter Lenkov, who has successfully revived Hawaii Five-0 and MacGyver. Co-written by Lenkov and fellow Hawaii Five-0 executive producer/showrunner Eric Guggenheim, the new Magnum P.I. will feature the same central quartet of characters but, instead of four guys, it will consist of three men and a woman, with Higgins (originally played by John Hillerman) reconceived as Juliet Higgins, a disavowed former MI:6 agent. The series will once again follow Thomas Magnum, a decorated ex-Navy SEAL who, upon returning home from Afghanistan, repurposes his military skills to become a private investigator with help from fellow vets Theodore "TC" Calvin and Orville "Rick" Wright as they take on the cases no one else will.
A "Nancy Drew" TV series is once again in the works, with NBC developing a new series based on the iconic novel series after CBS attempted such a project last season. The new series still hails from writers and executive producers Tony Phelan and Joan Rater and executive producer Dan Jinks, who developed the CBS version, but the new series follows the author of the most famous female teen detective book series who is thrust into a real-life murder mystery. In need of help, she turns to her two best friends from childhood, who were the inspiration for all those books, and the women who have a real axe to grind about the way their supposed best friend chose to portray them all those years ago. This will be a completely different version than the original at CBS. That project would have focused on Drew, now an adult who works as a detective for the NYPD. Sarah Shahi, who starred in the CBS’ drama Person of Interest since its second season, starred in the pilot as Drew but isn't currently attached to the NBC version.
Netflix recently announced it had picked up the script for Kate, a female-led action movie, and given it a $25 million budget. The concept is described as being in the same vein of Kill Bill and La Femme Nikita and centers on a woman who has 24 hours to solve her own murder. The project eyes a start date in April as Netflix quickly searches for the right director and star.
Bron Studios’ TV group has acquired rights to Danish author Sara Blaedel’s bestselling crime fiction book series centered on police detective Louise Rick. The plan is to adapt the novels as a TV series, with the first published Rick book The Forgotten Girls to serve as the backdrop for Season 1. The plot of that 2015 book from Grand Central Publishing kicks off when fresh corpse of an unidentified woman with a large scar on her face is discovered in the woods. Rick, the new Commander of the Missing Persons Department, and her partner set out to find her identity and killer. This leads them on a journey to uncover a decades-long unsolved mystery tied to a mental asylum.
The CW has put in development Dead Inside, an hourlong drama from writer Katie Lovejoy, Warner Bros. TV and Bill Lawrence’s studio-based Doozer Productions. Penned by Lovejoy, the story centers on an underachieving beat cop who survives an explosion that killed her hotshot detective big brother. When she starts seeing his ghost, it flips their sibling dynamic on its head and allows her to truly live her life for the first time, as they work together to help crime victims both living and dead, and figure out the unfinished business keeping his spirit on Earth.
Adding to its range of local-language offerings, Netflix has picked up The Mantis, a French serial killer thriller starring Carole Bouquet. The series centers on Jeanne Deber (Bouquet), aka The Mantis, a famous serial killer who terrorized France more than 25 years ago and is forced by the police to come out of solitary confinement to help hunt down a copycat. Deber agrees to collaborate with the investigation, but only on one condition: if her son, now a cop, will work by her side.
TNT’s The Alienist has a new trailer and a premiere date of January 22, 2017. The series is based on the best-selling novel by Caleb Carr and stars Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning as 19th century investigators on the trail of a Jack the Ripper-like serial killer. True Detective creator Cary Fukunaga wrote all eight episodes of the first season, and also executive produced.
PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO
Crime Corner host Matt Coyle welcomed USA Today bestselling Author Allen Eskens, who is also the recipient of the Barry Award, Minnesota Book Award, Rosebud Award, and the Silver Falchion Award and has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, Thriller Award, and Anthony Award. His debut novel, The Life We Bury, has been published in 16 languages and is being developed for a feature film.
Two great authors were featured on the latest Suspense Radio Inside Edition, as Daniella Bernett and Jeff Gulvin stopped by. Daniella Bernett's series features journalist Emmeline Kirby and the charming jewel thief Gregory Longdon, while Jeff Gulvin is the author of a series featuring John Quarrie, a Texas Ranger working in the 1960s.
Laura Caldwell, an author, attorney, educator, and motivational speaker, visited 2nd Sunday Crime with Libby Hellmann to discuss Caldwell's work and most recent anthology, Anatomy of Innocence, stories of the wrongfully convicted that are brought to life in collaboration with best-selling mystery and thriller writers.
THEATER
The Queen’s Theatre in Barnstaple will welcome the Classic Thriller Theatre Company from October 23-28 for their performance of Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone. The tale of deceit, despair and cover-up tells the story of Eunice, an illiterate housekeeper who joins a wealthy family and is forced to hide her shortcomings from her new employers with potentially fatal consequences. The impressive cast list includes Chris Ellison as Detective Superintendent Vetch; Robert Duncan as George Coverdale; Sophie Ward as Eunice Parchman; Antony Costa as Rodge Meadows; Deborah Grant as Joan Smith; and Ben Nealon as Detective Sergeant Challoner.
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