We get back to a more normal schedule today with this latest edition of Media Murder for Monday (on Monday once again!) wrapping up the latest in crime drama news:
AWARDS
The Golden Globes were handed out last night and included several nods to the crime dramedy film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Best Picture, Drama; Best Actress, Frances McDormand; Supporting Actor, Sam Rockwell; Best Screenplay, Martin McDonagh). On the TV side, Ewan McGregor won for Best Actor (Fargo); and several awards were handed out to Big Little Lies (Best Limited Series; Best Actress, Nicole Kidman; Best Supporting Actress, Laura Dern; and Best Supporting Actor, Alexander Skarsgård).
MOVIES
Lakeith Stanfield has joined the cast of Sony’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web, although his role is being kept under wraps. The film, set for release on Oct. 19, 2018, is being directed by Fede Alvarez and is based on the global bestseller written by David Lagercrantz, continuing the fourth installment of the "Millennium" series of crime novels featuring Lisbeth Salander that were originally written by the late Stieg Larsson.
Victorious alum Avan Jogia has been cast in New Line’s reboot of Shaft. He joins previously announced cast members Samuel L. Jackson, Jessie T. Usher, Regina Hall, Alexandra Shipp and Richard Roundtree. Details about Jogia’s role haven't been disclosed, but Tim Story will direct a script from Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow which follows a nerdy FBI agent who launches his own investigation after his friend dies under suspicious circumstances. Needing help with the case, he reluctantly enlists the help from his estranged father — the legendary, stuck-in-the-70s-but-still-cool-as-hell titular John Shaft.
A trailer was released for the remake of the 1974 revenge thriller Death Wish, which stars Bruce Willis as Kersey, a surgeon who begins dishing out vigilante justice when his wife and daughter are viciously attacked in their suburban home. Kersey hunts down the city’s criminals like a badass superhero in today’s new trailer, which asks a pressing question: Is Paul Kersey a hero, or has he, himself, become a villain? Death Wish arrives in theaters on March 2, 2018.
The Guardian looked ahead to "The most exciting action and thriller films of 2018."
And Deadline looked back on the career of Peggy Cummins, one of Hollywood’s most unforgettable film noire molls for her role in 1950’s Gun Crazy, as well as appearances in 1943’s Old Mother Riley Detective and 1949’s If This Be Sin. Cummins died this past week from a stroke at the age of 92.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Kate Beckinsale is set to star in The Widow, an eight-episode drama series from Amazon and ITV. The Widow follows Georgia Wells (Beckinsale) who has cut herself off from her previous life and is no longer the woman she once was. After seeing her "late" husband on the news, she is pulled back to face the world and will stop at nothing until she gets the truth about her past. Described as an emotional, gut-wrenching thriller, The Widow will take Georgia into the depths of the African Congo where danger and revelation will greet her at every turn.
Apple has landed Are You Sleeping, a thriller drama series project starring Oscar winner Octavia Spencer (The Help, Hidden Figures), which hails from Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. The project is based on the novel by Kathleen Barber, and is described as a "twisty psychological thriller about a mega-hit podcast that reopens a murder case—and threatens to unravel the carefully constructed life of the victim’s daughter."
Good news for Fargo fans: the Noah Hawley anthology series is likely to return to FX next year, according to cable channel boss John Landgraf, who said that Noah Hawley "has told us that he has an idea — which excites me enormously — for a fourth cycle of Fargo." Hawley added, "The plan is to have that ready for 2019. I'm focused right now on what will come in 2018, but the anticipation is that there's another cycle in 2019." Hawley declined to give any details on what Season 4 may look like, but said that the next Fargo project will actually be a book of scripts and photos and interviews covering the first three seasons.
Stephen Dorff has been cast opposite Mahershala Ali and Carmen Ejogo in the third season of Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO crime anthology series True Detective. Ali will play the lead role of Wayne Hays, a state police detective from northwest Arkansas. As with the breakout original installment of True Detective, Pizzolatto is the sole writer with the exception of Episode 4 of Season 3 which he co-wrote with David Milch.
English actor Ed Westwick has been axed from the BBC's Agatha Christie drama Ordeal of Innocence after being accused of sexual assault. Producers have made the decision to replace him with actor Christian Cooke and will reshoot sections of the series with Cooke. Westwick, who is best known for his role in US drama Gossip Girl, has denied all allegations, adding, "It is disheartening and sad to me that as a result of two unverified and probably untrue social media claims, there are some in this environment who could ever conclude I have had anything to do with such vile and horrific conduct. I have absolutely not, and I am cooperating with the authorities so that they can clear my name as soon as possible." Ordeal By Innocence had been intended to air on BBC One over the Christmas period but was pulled amid the allegations.
Matt Letscher (The Flash) is set to co-star alongside new stars Michael Peña and Diego Luna in the upcoming fourth season of Netflix’s drug trafficking saga Narcos. In Season 4, Letscher will play James Kuykendal, part of a new team of DEA agents and Colombian police who turn their attention to the Cali Cartel. But this time they have an advantage – a mole in the Cartel.
Debra Winger has signed for a series-regular role on Season 2 of Amazon Prime’s quirky genre-bending spy dramedy Patriot. The three-time Oscar nominee will play Bernice Tavner, mother of lead John Tavner (Michael Dorman), the melancholy intelligence officer who works out his issues by writing folk songs. Bernice is a high-ranking federal government official whose obligation to her country requires distance from her son’s complicated work, though her son’s worsening mental state requires the close care of a mother.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
This Weekend's Book TV Sunday, January 7, featured David Ignatius, author of The Quantum Spy: A Thriller.
Crime Cafe podcast host Debbie Mack interviewed mystery author, Ray Flynt about his writing and series featuring P.I. Brad Frame.
Episode 2 of Crime Friction welcomed author Alison Gaylin, whose next book, If I Die Tonight, launches March 6.
THEATER
Calgary's Vertigo Theatre is presenting a two-man show as part of its Mystery Series. Torquil Campbell and Chris Abraham star in True Crime, which centers on Clark Rockefeller, a real life con man of the highest order, now serving a near-life sentence in a California State prison, and iconic musician and provocateur Torquil Campbell, who wants to try Rockefeller on for size. What does it mean for an excellent fabulator to embody an excellent fabulator? And in the end, does an intricate con differ that much from a successful work of art? "Entirely scripted or absolutely extemporaneous, True Crime is a mind-twisting encounter with an artist obsessed with how we all fake it, one way or another."
In an unusual Agatha Christie staging, the Vancouver International Puppet Festival's HomeGrown Series is presenting Who Killed Gertrude Crump?, a plot-twist-a-minute puppet caper playing at Performance Works, February 13-18. Acclaimed actor/puppeteer Tara Travis inhabits the ghost of Agatha Christie and animates this tale with a cast of original puppets and a gamut of voices in a haunted house fraught with surprises. The project was written by Ryan Gladstone who borrows from every single Agatha Christie book and play creating an amalgamation of her strangest characters and most shocking plot twists.
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