It's Monday again, folks, which means it's time for your weekly crime drama roundup:
MOVIES
Birth of a Nation filmmaker Nate Parker is attached to direct Black & Blue, a feature inspired by the life of decorated LAPD detective Ralph Waddy and based on a script originally penned by Jim McGrath. Black & Blue will revolve around Ralph Waddy’s life, a true hero at the LAPD, during what was the most racially charged period in the city’s history as it dealt with the Watts riots, Robert Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel, the rise of the Black Panthers, the capture of the Skid Row Slasher, and the Manson Murders (which Waddy connected to Charles Manson and his followers).
The production company Studio 8 has acquired the action/thriller Champion about two American brothers, wrongly sentenced to prison in Thailand, who are then forced to compete in Thai boxing for a chance to win their freedom. No director has been attached to the project just yet.
UK production company Working Title (The Darkest Hour) has optioned the slasher satire My Sister, The Serial Killer with a view to turning the upcoming book into a feature. The debut novel of Nigerian writer Oyinkan Braithwaite follows a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has an inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends. The darkly comedic story, buzzed-about in publishing circles, was previously snapped up by U.S. publisher Doubleday as part of a significant five-figure advance and is set to hit shelves stateside later this year
It was recently reported that Bill Skarsgard and Maika Monroe would team for filmmaker Dan Berk and Robert Olsen's thriller Villains, playing amateur criminals who get more than they bargain for when they meet a couple homeowners with a disturbing secret. This past week, the project's producers announced that Emmy-winning actor Kyra Sedgwick and Jeffrey Donovan from Burn Notice have also been cast as the homeowners, who will do anything to keep their secret.
Actor Michael Landes has been cast in the next installment in the Olympus Has Fallen film series, Angel Has Fallen, which has Gerard Butler returning as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning as well as Morgan Freeman as President Trumbull. Landes will play Sam Wilcox, the Chief of Staff to President Trumbull in the Ric Roman Waugh-directed sequel. This time, Banning is framed for the attempted assassination of the President and must elude his own agency and the FBI as he tries to uncover the real threat.
Craig Di Francia (Power) will appear in Martin Scorsese’s Netflix film The Irishman starring Robert De Niro as Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran, a reputed hitman suspected of involvement in the 1975 disappearance of the Teamsters leader. The pic is based on Charles Brandt’s novel, I Heard You Paint Houses, which Steve Zaillian adapted for the screen. No word on a release date yet for the project that also includes Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, and Harvey Keitel in the stellar cast.
STXfilms and Lakeshore Entertainment have set a release date of September 7 for the Jennifer Garner action-thriller Peppermint, which is the weekend following the Labor Day stretch. Directed by Pierre Morel (Taken, The Gunman), Peppermint tells the story of young mother Riley North (Garner) who awakens from a coma after her husband and daughter are killed in a brutal attack on the family. When the system frustratingly shields the murderers from justice, Riley sets out to transform herself from citizen to urban guerilla as she methodically delivers her personal brand of justice.
Hunter Killer has also gotten its release date of October 26. The Donovan Marsh-directed action thriller stars Gerard Butler, Gary Oldman, and Michael Nyqvist in the story of an untested American submarine captain who teams with Navy SEALs to rescue the Russian president, who has been kidnapped by a rogue general.
A trailer was released for David Robert Mitchell's contemporary fever-dream thriller, Under The Silver Lake, which stars Andrew Garfield in the neo-noir story of a man searching for the truth behind the mysterious crimes, murders, and disappearances in his L.A. neighborhood.
The Warner Archive Collection has released new restorations in 1080p transfers of Paul Newman starring as P.I. Lew Harper in the movies Harper (1966) and The Drowning Pool (1975), based on Ross Macdonald's novels featuring hardboiled P.I. Lew Archer. Virginia-Pilot contributor Kay Reynolds profiled the new color-rich restorations.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
The BBC has ordered four new dramas for BBC One, including the spy surveillance thriller The Capture, the brainchild of writer-director Ben Chanan (Cyberbully). The project begins with the unjust arrest of an innocent man and escalates into a multi-layered conspiracy of manipulated evidence, and has been described as "research based but with huge flair in its storytelling. The Capture shines a light on surveillance culture and asks what happens in a world where we can no longer trust the evidence in front of us."
Trainspotting's Kelly Macdonald is set to star in another BBC One project, the legal drama The Victim, created by The Man In The High Castle writer Rob Williams. Macdonald will play Anna Dean, a Scottish mother whose nine-year old boy was murdered fifteen years ago by a 13 year old. Years later, having campaigned to be told of the killer’s new identity, she is accused of revealing his new name online. James Harkness plays Craig Myers, who is attacked after Macdonald’s Dean accuses him of being the child killer, while John Hannah (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency) plays D.I. Steven Grover, the detective in charge of the case.
Another new BBC program, Elizabeth Is Missing, combines a mystery plot line with a tough look at a woman’s struggle with dementia. When her best friend Elizabeth goes missing, Maud is convinced that something terrible has happened and sets out to solve the mystery. But with her dementia worsening, Maud’s search takes on a poignant urgency. Based on the best-selling novel by Emma Healey, the drama is written by Andrea Gibb (Swallows And Amazons) and made by STV Productions.
Amazon Prime Video has booked the Mexican crime drama Falco, a remake of German procedural The Last Cop. The 15-part series will star Michel Brown and is directed and showrun by El Chapo’s Ernesto Contreras. The drama, which is set in 1994, follows a policeman with a promising future and a young family who must rebuild his life in 2018 after he wakes up from a 24-year coma after being shot in the line of duty.
Former Major Crimes star Kearran Giovanni has landed a lead role opposite Derek Luke, Jeri Ryan, and Paula Newsome in NBC’s drama pilot, Suspicion. Based on the book by Joseph Finder and directed by Brad Anderson, Suspicion is described as a Hitchcockian thriller about how far one man will go to save the people he loves. After Danny Goldman (Luke) accepts a handshake loan from his new friend and millionaire neighbor, he gets a visit from the FBI and learns that the decision is one he will regret for the rest of his life. Coerced to work as an informant for the FBI to earn back his freedom, Danny is forced to infiltrate a world of violence and corruption while trying to protect his family. Giovanni will play Lucy Fletcher, a psychotherapist.
Stephen Hill (Law & Order: SVU) is set as a series regular opposite Jay Hernandez and Perdita Weeks in CBS’ Magnum P.I. pilot, the reboot of the classic 1980s Tom Selleck series. The show will feature the same central quartet of characters as the original, but instead of four guys, it consists of three men and a woman, with Jonathan Higgins reconceived as Juliet Higgins (Weeks). Hill will play Theodore "TC" Calvin, a former Marine Corps chopper pilot and one of Magnum’s group of loyal friends who bonded when they were all POWs in Iraq.
Another fan favorite recurring character from The Good Wife is returning to the CBS legal drama’s sequel series on CBS All Access. Mike Colter is set for a guest arc on the upcoming second season of The Good Fight, reprising his role as Lemond Bishop, a powerful Chicago drug lord who was a controversial major client of Lockhart/Gardner. He first appeared toward the end of the first season and quickly grew into a major recurring character, appearing in 21 episodes of the series’ first six seasons. Bishop’s Good Wife story left off with him in prison; it will now be picked up on The Good Fight, which stars The Good Wife’s Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo.
CBS has set the finale dates for some of your favorite shows including its many crime dramas.
Meanwhile, USA Network announced premiere dates for summer series including Queen of the South (June 21), which tells the powerful story of Teresa Mendoza (Alice Braga), a woman who is forced to run from the Mexican cartel and seek refuge in America, and Shooter (June 21), which follows the journey of Bob Lee Swagger (Ryan Phillippe), a highly decorated veteran who must confront a nemesis from his past in order to return to a life of normalcy.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Meet the Thriller Author podcast host Alan Petersen welcomed David Banner, an author living in the Coastal Southeast who "spends way too much time playing catch on the sand with his Airedale terrier." Banner is the author of the Dangerous Waters thriller series set in the Gulf Coast of Florida.
Spybrary spoke with Joyce Wayne about her spy novel Last Night of the World, which isn't set in the usual spy-centric settings of Berlin, DC, London or Moscow but rather in Ottawa, Canada, and how it's based on true events and real people.
The Crimetime podcast had reviews of "lying" crime fiction as well a profile of the Lucifer television series.
THEATER
The rarely-seen Love From A Stranger, by Agatha Christie, is coming to The Marlowe Theatre in Canberbury with a run from Tuesday April 3 to Saturday April 7. The story tells of Cecily Harrington's whirlwind romance with a handsome and charming stranger. Swept her off her feet, she recklessly abandons her old life to settle in the remote and blissful surroundings of a country cottage. However, Nigel Lawrence, her newfound love, is not all that he seems. This edge-of-your-seat drama has been rediscovered in a new production by Lucy Bailey and adapted by Frank Vosper, drawing on both Agatha Christie's short story "Philomel Cottage," and Christie's own recently discovered stage adaptation of the same short story, The Stranger.
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