Welcome to a new Monday and a new roundup of the latest crime drama news:
THE BIG SCREEN
Warner Brothers picked up film rights to Annie Ward’s debut thriller, Beautiful Bad, which has a U.S. publication date set for March 2019. Beautiful Bad the tells the devastating story of three friends who come face to face with manipulation, turmoil, and tragedy, unable to outrun their tangled and tumultuous past that culminates in a desperate crime.
Filmula Entertainment has acquired rights to historian James L. Swanson’s upcoming book Lion In Winter, about America’s most prolific Chicago Outfit syndicate mob boss and a key henchman in the infamous "Capone massacres." The book will be adapted into a feature film by Chuck Hogan (13 Hours) and is based on a true story about a criminal who has never been caught. It's described as "an ambitious ensemble piece covering the lives of up-and-coming hitmen, next in line to the title character’s aging, relentless syndicate murderer in an untold tale of American history."
The Ink Factory and Marc Platt Prods. are joining forces to adapt We Were Never Here, the novel from Lara Prescott based on events surrounding the publication of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, as either a film or TV series. The project is a thriller and love story set in the 1950s during the Cold War and centers on a CIA plan to engineer the publication of Doctor Zhivago in Pasternak’s home country of Russia where authorities banned the book.
SK Global (fresh from its box-office hit with Crazy Rich Asians) has nabbed the film rights to the exposé Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood and the World. The book, written by Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, recounts a massive U.S. fraud case that ensnared Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio after a wannabe infiltrated his inner circle. The book centers on Jho Low, the heist's alleged mastermind, who remains an international fugitive.
Gal Gadot has signed on to star in Death on the Nile, the latest Agatha Christie adaptation set up at 20th Century Fox with Kenneth Branagh directing and Michael Green (who also adapted Orient Express) set as screenwriter. The project, which already has a December 20, 2019, release date, centers on Poirot investigating a murder during a luxurious cruise on the Nile River that he just happens to be on. But just as he identifies a motley collection of would-be killers, several of the suspects also meet their demise, which only deepens the mystery.
Donald Sutherland is the latest to join the cast of the Giuseppe Capotondi-directed heist film The Burnt Orange Heresy. The film is based on Charles Willeford’s novel, which was adapted for the screen by Scott B. Smith, and follows an art critic and his girlfriend who make a deal with a wealthy man to steal a masterpiece from a famous artist’s studio. But not everything is as it seems and career ambitions soon lead to blackmail, arson, burglary, and even murder.
Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons, Sienna Miller, and Friday Night Lights alum Taylor Kitsch are set to co-star in 17 Bridges, the action thriller starring Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman. The plot follows a disgraced NYPD detective (Boseman), who is thrust into a citywide manhunt for a pair of cop killers after uncovering a massive and unexpected conspiracy. As the night unfolds, lines become blurred on who he is pursuing, and who is in pursuit of him. When the search intensifies, extreme measures are taken to prevent the killers from escaping Manhattan as the authorities close all 17 bridges to prevent any entry or exit from the iconic island.
Quentin Tarantino has set Bruce Dern to play George Spahn in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, the role that Dern’s longtime friend Burt Reynolds was going to play but was unable to shoot before he died on September 6. Dern joins a stellar cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, James Mardsen, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Timothy Olyphant, Damian Lewis, Lena Dunham, Emile Hirsch, Luke Perry, Scoot McNairy and James Remar. The film is a Pulp Fiction-esque tapestry of stories in an around Los Angeles in the summer of 1969, when Charles Manson and his followers massacred Sharon Tate and others.
Focus Features has set a February 8 limited release for Everybody Knows (Todos lo Saben), Asghar Farhadi’s psychological thriller starring Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Ricardo Darín that opened the Cannes Film Festival in May. It follows Laura (Cruz) on her travels with her two kids from Argentina to her small hometown in Spain for her sister’s wedding. Amid the joyful reunion and festivities, the eldest daughter is abducted. In the tense days that follow, various family and community tensions surface and deeply hidden secrets are revealed.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
The team behind Blindspot have landed a new drama at CBS with a pilot production commitment to The Secret to a Good Marriage. The project centers on an elite pair of CIA spies who, in the wake of their fractured marriage, are pushed to their limits both professionally and personally, fighting to save the world while they forge a new kind of relationship for themselves and their son.
CBS also put in development H-Town, a drama series from writer Samantha Corbin-Miller (Law & Order: SVU) that's based on the Echo Media/Sphere Media Plus Canadian cop drama series 19-2. The U.S. version will follow two Houston detectives from opposing sides of a multi-generational family feud who are paired as partners and find themselves surprisingly drawn to each other even as they investigate a case that may have far-reaching ramifications for both their families.
Gomorrah series writers Leonardo Fasoli and Maddalena Ravagli are leading the book-to-TV adaptation of the WWII crime story The Butchers Of Berlin. The murder-mystery story is set in war-torn Nazi Germany 1943 and centers on financial crime investigator August Schlegel, who is assigned to a homicide case and finds himself immersed in a murky world. The book is the first in a developing series following Schlegel through the plotting and paranoia of the Third Reich.
French actress Eva Green (Casino Royale, Penny Dreadful) has signed to star in the BBC television adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Luminaries. The period tale is set on the Wild West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island in the boom years of the 1860s gold rush and is billed as an "epic story of love, murder and revenge, as men and women traveled across the world to make their fortunes.” The BBC also announced that Eve Hewson (Bridge of Spies) has joined the cast.
Emmy-nominated writer and producer Frank Pugliese (House of Cards) has been set as showrunner for TNT’s The Angel of Darkness, a limited series based on the sequel to best-selling The Alienist by Caleb Carr. The Alienist’s lead cast, including Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning, will return for The Angel of Darkness with a new storyline that finds Sara Howard (Fanning), who has opened her own private detective agency, enlisting the help of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) and John Moore (Evans) to hunt down an elusive killer.
Last week it was announced Veronica Mars is getting a revival, and the writing staff later revealed by show creator Rob Thomas will include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who penned two mystery novels based on Sherlock Holmes' brother Mycroft. The writing team will also include David Walpert, Diane Ruggiero, Raymond Obstfeld, and Rick Fox.
The CW has put in development the drama Ruthless from Bull star Michael Weatherly and his Solar Drive Productions and CBS Television Studios. Written by George Olson, Ruthless centers on an ex-CIA operative, desperate for a normal life after a decade spent as a government killing machine, and a slightly unhinged teenage girl craving an escape from the mundane, who are forced into an unlikely alliance.
FX is developing the drama Trashers, loosely based on Rich Cohen’s The Atlantic article "The Mobster Who Bought his Son a Hockey Team.” The story follows a minor league hockey team owned by a small town trash hauler with mob ties and is described “a tale of goons, no-show jobs, and a legendary minor-league franchise that helped land its owner in prison."
French-born author Johana Gustawsson’s Roy and Castells series has been sold to Banijay Studios France and award-winning French actress Alexandra Lamy for a television adaptation. Lamy will adapt it for the screen and play the main character, Emily Roy. The series will include four to six episodes per book beginning with the thriller Block 46, set in Sweden where Chief Inspector Bergstrom and renowned profiler Emily Roy investigate a series of murders of children.
Jonathan Tucker has been added to the Elizabeth Banks-directed Charlie’s Angels reboot, which will focus on the next generation of elite crime-fighting detectives. Tucker joins Kristen Stewart, Elizabeth Banks, Naomi Scott, Luis Gerardo Méndez, as well as Patrick Stewart and Banks (and the recently announced Djimon Hounsou) playing different Bosley characters. Following the original TV series and films, The Townsend Agency has grown considerably and gone global, providing security and intelligence services to a wide variety of private clients with offices and highly-trained teams worldwide.
Billy Lush (Kingdom) and Juliet Landau (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) are set for key recurring roles on the upcoming fifth season of Amazon’s Bosch, based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels. Bosch stars Titus Welliver as homicide Detective Harry Bosch, Jamie Hector as Jerry Edgar, Amy Aquino as Lt. Grace Billets, Madison Lintz as Maddie Bosch and Lance Reddick as Deputy Chief Irvin Irving. Lush will play Stones, a tough, cold-blooded criminal, heavily involved in the opioid trade. Landau will portray Rita Tedesco, a court reporter living with a secret.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Karin Slaughter went one-on-one with KCTV in Kansas City, talking about her latest novel, Pieces of Her.
National Public Radio affiliate KCAW in Sitka, Alaska, spoke with former Sitka police chief Sheldon Schmitt has published his first crime novel, Bush Blues.
Authors on the Air chatted with writer, lawyer, and former therapist Wendy Tyson about how her background has inspired her two mystery series, the Greenhouse mystery series and the Allison Campbell mystery series.
Suspense Radio Insider Edition welcomed authors Marine Riches (The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die) and Reavis Wortham (Gold Dust) to the show.
Crime Cafe host Debbi Mack spoke with attorney and crime writer Michael Zimecki.
Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham discussed some mystery adaptations and recommended books with LGBTQ protagonists.
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