Monday greetings to all, with a top o'the week dose of the latest crime drama news:
MOVIES
The British Independent Film Awards Nominations were announced this past week, and the crime comedy-drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, was a big winner, earning nods for Best British Independent Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Martin McDonagh), Best Actress (Frances McDormand), and Best Supporting Actor (Woody Harrelson). The film had previous won the Best Screenplay and People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. It will be released in the US by Fox Searchlight Pictures on November 10, 2017.
The extraordinary story of two British sisters, Ida and Louise Cook, who became unlikely spies and heroines in helping Jews to flee Nazi persecution is to be told on the big screen. The film, The Cooks, is being produced by Donald Rosenfeld, former president of Merchant Ivory Productions, who made period classics such as Howards End, starring Emma Thompson. Having worked on four productions with Thompson – with a fifth project already under way – Rosenfeld would is eyeing casting her as one of the Cook sisters alongside fellow Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett.
In another spy project, Tom Hughes, who plays Prince Albert in ITV/Masterpiece’s Victoria, is joining the cast of Red Joan, the story of a grandmother exposed as the KGB’s longest-serving British spy. Based on the 2013 book by Jennie Rooney, the real-life story has Judi Dench playing Joan Stanley with Sophie Cookson (Kingsman: The Golden Circle) as the young Joan and Trevor Nunn directing from Lindsay Shapero’s script.
The Chris Evans political thriller The Red Sea Diving Resort, written and directed by Gideon Raff and co-starring Haley Bennett and Ben Kingsley, has had its international distribution picked up by STXinternational. In the movie, Evans plays an Israeli Mossad agent who runs a secret operation to smuggle thousands of Ethiopian Jews to safety in 1981 with his team of spies. They do this under the guise of a fictitious diving resort reminiscent of the same subterfuge used by the CIA to get Americans hostages out of Iran in Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning film Argo.
Lily Collins has landed the highly coveted role of the former girlfriend of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy in Voltage Picture’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile. She will star opposite Zac Efron, who was announced to play Bundy in Joe Berlinger’s thriller during Cannes. The film is told from Elizabeth’s (Collins) point of view during the multi-year period that Bundy hid his now-notorious murder spree from his live-in lover, played by Collins.
TELEVISION
CBS is developing the drama True Conviction based on the film documentary from Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s Tribeca Productions. Written by Shelton Kodish and Lopez, the project centers on three exonerated men in Dallas who team up to investigate cases of all kinds in an attempt to balance the scales of justice, while rebuilding their lives and navigating the newfound perils of a world that has moved on without them.
ABC has given a put pilot commitment to an untitled cop drama from Conviction co-creator Liz Friedlander and the MGC. Written and directed by Friedlander, the project is described as a character-driven procedural that follows the first female partnership in an elite division of the LAPD, where the two detectives use their particular set of skills to tackle the most high-profile cases as well as a system that doesn’t necessarily want them there.
Not to be outdone in the police procedural department, NBC has bought three police dramas from Chris Morgan (writer of the blockbuster Fast & Furious movie franchise): Darwin’s Blade, based on Dan Simmons’ novel, is being co-written by Morgan and Duane Swierczynski (who will co-executive produce) and centers on Darwin “Dar” Minor, a brilliant yet arrogant accident-reconstruction specialist who consults police on the bizarre cases no one else can solve; MSU, described as a high-octane police drama that follows an elite unit of LAPD motor cops on their dangerous assignments; and Walkaways, from Chicago Fire executive producers Andrea Newman and Michael Gilvary, which revolves around two disgraced NYC police detectives — an overachieving, hard-charging young woman and a brilliant but broken-down veteran — who are paired up and given one last chance to redeem themselves by solving the department’s toughest and most radioactive “walkaway” cases.
Fox is developing a potential new incarnation of its Emmy-winning 24 drama series that would have a female lead and take the real-time format of the terrorism-themed original and apply it to a different arena, criminal justice. The Killing writer-producer Jeremy Doner will write the script with Howard Gordon, who ran the original series. Details about the premise are sketchy, but the female lead is said to be a prosecutor who uncovers a legal conspiracy and has to work against the clock to save a death row inmate facing imminent execution whom she had helped prosecute but may be innocent.
Even before it’s arrived in North America by way of HBO, the BBC series Strike, based on author J.K. Rowling’s series of books following the adventures of private investigator Cormoran Strike has been given the go-ahead for a third series. The first series was comprised of three episodes covering the happenings in the first novel, The Cockoo’s Calling. The second series was two episodes and follows the second book, The Silkworm. With BBC ordering the third series, it will catch up to the third and final published book in the series, Career of Evil.
The atmospheric French crime drama Witnesses season 2 coming to the BBC. The new season starts when a woman rushing to catch her bus one morning steps onto the vehicle and rather than a group of disgruntled commuters finds it full of frozen corpses. Lieutenant Sandra Wincklerm (once again played by Marie Dompnier) is soon on the case and determines that all the fifteen dead men were previously involved with the same woman, Catherine Keemer, who is played by Audrey Fleurot of Spiral fame.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, the second installment of FX's ripped-from-yesterday's-headlines anthology series, will premiere on FX on Wednesday, Jan. 17. Versace tells the tale of the 1997 murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace and stars Darren Criss, Edgar Ramirez, Ricky Martin and Penelope Cruz as Versace's sister Donatella.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Quebec crime fiction writer Louise Penny was the keynote speaker at a literary festival in Quebec City where she opened up her writing career, receiving the Order of Canada, as well as her unlikely friendship with Hillary Clinton.
Suspense Radio Inside Edition had three special guests this week: author Jamie Freveletti talking about her book Blood Run; Diane Vallere, speaking about the 30 year history of Sisters in Crime; and USA Today bestselling author Pat Gussin talking about her latest book Come Home.