Monday greetings! Start your week off with this latest roundup of crime drama news:
MOVIES
Sony Pictures won rights to finance and distribute #9, the working title of Quentin Tarantino’s next film. The project is set in Los Angeles in the late ’60s and early ’70s during the Charles Manson crime spree, with Tarantino hoping Margot Robbie will play the role of Sharon Tate. The film is described as featuring an ensemble cast, and Tarantino reportedly has had conversations with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio for the two main lead male roles.
Oscar winner Mahershala Ali has signed on to star in and executive produce a feature adaptation of A.J. Wolfe’s upcoming true crime thriller Burn. Anonymous Content acquired the book, which will be adapted for the big screen by Fredrick Kotto, a former detective turned screenwriter. Burn is described as a contemporary crime thriller about a Northern California detective who brought a cartel to its knees while working undercover, all while keeping that part of his life from his family.
The bidding battle to option rights to Riley Sager’s bestselling novel Final Girls was won by Universal Pictures. Sager's book centers around Quincy Carpenter, who 10 years ago went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horrible massacre. The press quickly labeled her as the “Final Girl” coined for the group of similar survivors. Riley Sager’s other mystery thriller Last Time I lied will be released July 10.
Bleecker Street’s second release with Steven Soderbergh, Unsane, will hit theaters on March 23. It's been reported that Soderbergh reportedly shot the project on his iPhone. It stars Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, SNL alum Jay Pharaoh, Juno Temple, Aimee Mullins, and Amy Irving and centers on a young woman (Foy) who is involuntarily committed to a mental institution where she is confronted by her greatest fear — but is it real or is it a product of her delusion?
Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) and Sebastian Stan (I, Tonya) are in negotiations to join Nicole Kidman in Karyn Kusama’s modern crime thriller Destroyer. The story follows the moral and existential odyssey of LAPD detective Erin Bell (Kidman) who, as a young cop, was placed undercover with a gang in the California desert with tragic results. When the leader of that gang re-emerges many years later, she must work her way back through the remaining members and into her own history with them to finally reckon with the demons that destroyed her past.
Circle of Confusion, the production company behind The Walking Dead, has joined forces with Lightning Entertainment and Hindsight Media for a multi-year suspense/thriller genre slate deal, which aims to produce two-three films a year. The first film under this new deal will be Tone-Deaf, written and to be directed by Ricky Bates Jr., which follows millennial Olive who, after a string of bad relationships and work failures, leaves the city for a weekend of peace in the country only to discover the shockingly dark underbelly of rural America.
The 8th Annual Noir City Xmas returns December 20 at San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre. The Film Noir Foundation will offer up "a double-feature of rare noir-stained 1940s' yuletide films to darken your spirits," Manhandled and Alias Boston Blackie. The evening will also feature the unveiling of the full schedule for Noir City 16, the world's most popular film noir festival, coming to the Castro Theatre January 26 through February 4, 2018. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Kevin Bacon and Aldis Hodge are set to star on Showtime’s drama pilot, City on a Hill, which hails from Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Jennifer Todd. The story is set in the early 90s, when Boston was rife with violent criminals emboldened by local law enforcement agencies in which corruption and racism was the norm. It all changes during the “Boston Miracle,” when District Attorney “Decourcy Ward” (Hodge) forms an unlikely alliance with a corrupt yet venerated FBI veteran, “Jackie Rhodes” (Bacon), who is deeply invested in maintaining the status quo. Together they take on a family of armored car robbers from Charlestown in a case that grows to encompass and eventually upend Boston’s city-wide criminal justice system.
Netflix is nearing a deal for rights to Hummingbird Salamander and plans to tap Sugar23 to produce the picture. The project is based on the book by Jeff VanderMeer, and is "set ten seconds into the future" in a story that deals with bioterrorism, ecoterrorism, and climate change."
Amazon has acquired the Sony Pictures crime thriller drama Absentia headlined by former Castle star Stana Katic in her return to television. The series enters on FBI agent Emily Byrne (Katic). who disappears without a trace and is declared dead while hunting one of Boston’s most notorious serial killers. Six years later, Emily is found in a cabin in the woods, barely alive, and with no memory of the years she was missing. Returning home to learn her husband has remarried and her son is being raised by another woman, she soon finds herself implicated in a new series of murders.
Speaking of Castle, ABC has given a straight-to-series order to the Castle-like procedural Take Two from Castle co-creators Terri Edda Miller and Andrew W. Marlow. Starring Rachel Bilson and Eddie Cibrian, the drama follows a washed-up actress and former star of a hit police drama (Bilson) who, fresh out of rehab, teams up with a private investigator (Cibrian) as research for her comeback role.
Carmen Ejogo is set to star opposite Mahershala Ali in the third season of Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO crime anthology series True Detective. The new installment tells the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ejogo will play Amelia Reardon, an Arkansas schoolteacher with a connection to two missing children in 1980. Ali plays the lead role of Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas.
ABC has given a put pilot commitment to The French Detective, based on James Patterson’s Luc Moncrief mysteries, with The Artist's Jean Dujardin attached to star and EuropaCorp founder and Taken creator Luc Besson set to direct in his TV directorial debut. Written by Assassin’s Creed scribes Bill Collage and Adam Cooper, and Jonathan Collier (Bones), The French Detective is a light procedural drama that centers on Luc Moncrief, a Parisian detective who joins the NYPD in order to leave his previous life behind and start fresh as he and his blue collar female partner solve New York’s most complex and inscrutable crimes.
CBS has put in development the crime drama The Source, from Dr. Phil and Jay McGraw’s Stage 29 Productions and CBS Television Studios. Written by Amanda Green (Lethal Weapon, The Mysteries of Laura), The Source centers on a millennial investigative reporter who teams with an LAPD detective as they make use of her dogged brand of investigating outside the bounds of the law in order to expose crime and wrongdoing.
Fox has given a script commitment plus penalty to Off-Site, an hourlong adventure drama from 20th Century Fox TV and Len Wiseman’s studio-based Sketch Films. Off-Site centers around a former chaos agent for the CIA who’s recruited to Morocco by a UN Investigator to help unearth the mysteries behind a bizarre cult rumored to be in possession of a mystical threat.
The Wire alum Isiah Whitlock Jr. has been cast as a series regular opposite Tony Danza and Josh Groban in The Good Cop, a 10-episode straight-to-series dramedy crime procedural for Netflix. The Good Cop centers on Tony Sr. (Danza), a disgraced former NYPD officer who never followed the rules. He lives with his son, Tony Jr. (Groban), an earnest, obsessively honest NYPD detective who makes a point of always following the rules. This “odd couple” become unofficial partners as Tony Sr. offers his overly cautious son blunt, streetwise advice on everything from handling suspects to handling women. Whitlock will play veteran homicide detective, Burl Loomis, who’s marking the days left until retirement.
Streaming giant Netflix is teaming up with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment to produce an eight-episode political espionage series titled Bard of Blood. Based on the bestselling 2015 book of the same name by Bilal Siddiqi, the multilingual series, in Urdu, English, Hindi and other languages, is set in the Indian subcontinent. It will follow Kabir Anand, an expelled spy who is recalled from his new life as a Shakespeare professor to save his country and his long-lost love.
Fox’s new procedural drama 9-1-1 will bow at 9 PM Wednesday, January 3, following the debut of the 10-episode second season of The X-Files revival. The two series take the Wednesday night slots of the on-hiatus Empire and Star.
FX is developing the “Crimetown” podcast as a scripted series. The project will be written by hosts Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier, who are also behind HBO’s The Jinx. The podcast from Gimlet Media centers on the impact of organized crime and corruption on the city of Providence, R.I.
CBS made a back order decision on a few new fall series, including giving a full-season pickup to drama S.W.A.T. after three airings. The procedural stars stars Shemar Moore, Stephanie Sigman, Alex Russell, Jay Harrington, Lina Esco, Kenny Johnson, Peter Onorati and David Lim.
The first trailer was released for The Assassination Of Gianni Versace, the second season of FX's anthology series, American Crime Story.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
BBC Radio Bristol podcast host Steve Yabsley welcomed Thriller writer Sanjida Kay to discuss her gripping new novel, The Stolen Child.
Also via the BBC, author Simon Lelic joined the Radio 2 Book Club to discuss his new psychological thriller, The House.
Boston's public radio station WBUR discussed the newly-discovered Raymond Chandler story that takes on the health care industry.
Suspense Radio Inside Edition's last show of the year "packed in four hours into two hours," as it welcomed Steve Havill, Matt Coyle, Daryl Wood Gerber. and Dr. Mott Sharir.
Crime Cafe host Debbi Mack welcomed Art Taylor, author of On the Road with Del & Louise: A Novel in Stories, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Taylor has also won three additional Agatha Awards, an Anthony Award, two Macavity Awards, and three consecutive Derringer Awards for his short fiction.
Thriller Author Jamie Freveletti was the featured guest on Authors on the Air's 2nd Sunday Crime podcast. Her debut thriller Running from the Devil was awarded “Best First Novel” by the International Thriller Writers and Deadly Pleasures Magazine, and nominated for a Macavity Award for Best First Mystery by the Mystery Readers International.
NPR's All Things Considered profiled "The Tiny, Murderous World Of Frances Glessner Lee," a series of tiny dollhouse crime scenes that have been used to train investigators from the 1930s to the present.
THEATER
Kellen Blair and Joe Kinosian’s Murder for Two screwball spoof of old-time thrillers is now on stage at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. The show involves "madcap mayhem, involving a cross between (Agathie) Christie contemporaries Preston Sturges and the Marx Brothers," and is framed as a musical melodrama blending the English music hall with ragtime and a dash of diva disco. Murder for Two continues through Jan. 14 at the Stackner Cabaret.
A star-studded cast is taking to the stage in Bath for a performance of Ruth Rendell's classic novel, A Judgment In Stone, adapted by Simon Brett and Antony Lampard. It tells the story of Eunice Parchman, a housekeeper struggling to find her place in the world, but when she begins working for a very wealthy family, the long-standing reason for her awkwardness becomes clear and leads to a horrific Valentine’s Day murder. The show runs at the Theatre Royal in Sawclose through November 25.
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