Welcome to Monday and another roundup of crime drama news:
MOVIES
Oscar winner Russell Crowe and Captain Fantastic actor George MacKay have signed on to star in director Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang, along with Nicholas Hoult and Essie Davis. The script, by Shaun Grant and based on Peter Carey’s Booker prize-winning novel, follows notorious Australian bush-ranger Ned Kelly (MacKay), one of the world’s greatest outlaws, and the colonial badlands from which he rose during the 1870s.
As Deadline reported, in an unprecedented bold move, director Ridley Scott, along with Imperative Entertainment’s Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas, have decided to remove Kevin Spacey from their finished movie All The Money In The World. Christopher Plummer has been set to replace Spacey in the role of J Paul Getty by using re-shoots of the key scenes. Despite the re-shoots, Scott is also determined to keep the film’s December 22 release date. The project centers on the character of Getty, the oilman who refused to pay a ransom after his grandson, John Paul Getty III was kidnapped. Spacey worked about eight to ten days on the film, but the character is an important presence even if much of the action in the thriller involves the frantic efforts of the kidnapped heir’s mother Gail Harris (Williams), and Getty’s advisor (Wahlberg) to free the youth. The nightmare escalated after the family received his severed ear as proof the kidnappers were going to kill him if the money wasn’t delivered.
Lauren Cohan, best known for playing Maggie on The Walking Dead, has signed on to join Mark Wahlberg in Peter Berg’s action thriller Mile 22. The film centers on an elite intelligence officer who must escort a police officer with sensitive information to a getaway plane at an airport 22 miles away and also co-stars former UFC champ Ronda Rousey, The Raid star Iko Uwais, and John Malkovich.
Blacklist writer Marissa Jo Cerar has been tapped to do a rewrite of The Other Typist for Fox Searchlight. Keira Knightley has long been attached to star and produce the project, along with Scott Free UK. Based on the novel of the same name by Suzanne Rindell, the film is a pitch-black comedy about a police stenographer accused of murder in 1920s Manhattan.
A trailer was released for The Post, the political thriller starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Based on the true story of the Pentagon Papers scandal, The Post follows the unlikely partnership between The Washington Post’s Katharine Graham (Streep), the first female publisher of a major American newspaper, and editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks), as they race to catch up with The New York Times to expose a massive cover-up of government secrets that spanned three decades and four U.S. Presidents. The two must overcome their differences as they risk their careers – and their very freedom – to help bring long-buried truths to light.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Fox has put in development an hourlong FBI drama pilot titled Mrs. Otis Regrets, which hails from from Empire executive producer/showrunner Ilene Chaiken, Person of Interest writer-producer Melissa Scrivner Love, and Scandal co-executive producer Judy Smith. The project centers on FBI Special Agent Clementine Otis, a wife, mother and patriot who’s in the midst of investigating a domestic terrorism threat when a personal indiscretion – an adulterous affair with a prominent government official – shatters her life and her career at the FBI. While her former lover endures tepid condemnation and a few minor setbacks, Clementine is spectacularly publicly shamed, loses her job, her reputation, her credibility, possibly her family, and her access to the one person that could help her to thwart a major violent incident.
AMC has set Little Drummer Girl as its next John Le Carré miniseries adaptation, with actress Florence Pugh set to star in the lead role of Charlie, a young actress recruited by the head of the Israeli spy agency into becoming a double agent with the goal of tracking down a Palestinian terrorist mastermind. Like its previous le Carré collaboration The Night Manager, the adaptation is produced in partnership with Ink Factory and the BBC, which will get the UK airing rights.
NBC has put in development Relative Justice, a legal drama from The Boy Next Door writer Barbara Curry, Walter Parkes, and Laurie MacDonald. Written by former prosecutor-turned-writer Curry, Relative Justice is a legal procedural that touches on the theme of sexual harassment and centers on Hannah Hayes, a ambitious young legal analyst for a TV news show who has it all - until she is fired after rebuffing the advances of a popular news anchor and finds herself learning the ropes of practicing law at her mother’s unconventional law firm. Given this new opportunity to work together, Hannah and her mother, Evelyn, will find themselves exploring the joys and complexities of their mother-daughter relationship both at home and in the courtroom.
The British drama series Top Boy is getting a new season on Netflix, with the series chronicling two drug dealers at an East London housing estate returning for a third chapter in 2019 as a Netflix original. The new episodes will pick up as Dushane (Ashley Walters) returns from exile to his home in London to reclaim his throne in the highly lucrative drug market. He teams up with Sully (Kane Robinson), his spiritual brother, partner, and sometime rival who is also returning to the same streets after his own form of exile – prison – comes to an end. Awaiting them both is Jamie, the young, hungry and ruthless gang leader whose ambitions leave no place for Dushane and Sully.
Singer and Tony Award nominee Josh Groban has just signed on to play Tony Danza's son in the new hour-long Netflix dramedy The Good Cop. According to Netflix, the 10-episode season will focus on Tony Jr. (Groban), a dedicated and "obsessively honest" detective for the NYPD who takes great pleasure in always sticking to the many rules of his chosen profession. His dad, Tony Sr. (Danza), however, is actually a disgraced former officer with the NYPD who never followed the rules and will become an unofficial partner with his son as he tries to school Tony Jr. with street smart advice about everything from working his difficult job to dealing with personal relationships.
An Italian TV adaptation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, starring Rupert Everett and John Turturro, has found an international distributor. Turturro plays William of Baskerville and Everett plays Gui, with the series being written by Andrea Porporati, Nigel Williams and Giacomo Battiato, who also serves as director. Principal photography on the historical murder mystery starts this January in Rome, and the project is expected to air in the first quarter of 2019. TMG managing director Herbert L. Kloiber said: "Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose is a monumental masterpiece. We are thrilled to be part of this high-class, state-of-the-art adaptation, which will also resonate well with a young audience that loves the suspenseful story in a gloomy and thrilling medieval setting. Those who are already familiar with the book will see a new modern take and details to this multilayered story that can only be told in a series."
Starz is making its first foray into docuseries, greenlighting four new projects including one that explores the criminal justice system, Wrong Man, a six-part series that dives deep into the investigations that led to the conviction of three people who claim their innocence.
NBC revealed its midseason schedule, which includes returns of several shows that debuted new episodes in the fall and also the premiere of the second season of Taken, in which a young Bryan Mills must fight to overcome personal tragedy and exact revenge on those responsible.
Ahead of its December 1 premiere, Netflix has released the official trailer for Dark, its 10-part German mystery thriller that bowed at the 2017 Toronto Film Festival. Written by Jantje Friese and directed by Baran bo Odar, Dark is set in a German town in present day where the disappearance of two young children exposes the double lives and fractured relationships among four families. In ten, hour-long episodes, the story takes on a supernatural twist that ties back to the same town in 1986.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
The Irish Times Book Club podcast caught up with with Adrian McKinty at the Noireland crime fiction festival in Belfast to discuss McKinty's Sean Duffy series and his writing career.
Bestseller Michelle Richmond joined host Alex Dolan on Thrill Seekers, to talk about her books including the 2017 psychological thriller The Marriage Pact, which has been optioned by 20th Century Fox.
Host Terri Lynn Coop served up author Terrence McCauley at The Blue Plate Special to talk about the latest novel in his acclaimed techno-thriller series, A Conspiracy of Ravens.
THEATER
The English National Opera's adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (which is in turn based on the novel by Winston Graham), debuts on November 18 with a run through December 3. Marnie is psychological thriller set in England during the late 1950s when a young woman makes her way through life by embezzling from her employers, before she moves on and changes her identity. When her current boss Mark Rutland catches her red-handed, he blackmails her into a loveless marriage. Marnie is left with no choice but to confront the hidden trauma from her past.
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