Monday means it's time for the latest roundup of crime drama news:
THE BIG SCREEN
Margot Robbie’s Luckychap and Dan Lin’s Rideback are developing Tess Sharpe’s novel Barbed Wire Heart for Warner Bros., with Westworld scribe Carly Wray adapting. Barbed Wire Heart follows Harley McKenna, the daughter of a meth-dealing killer who’s been groomed for the family business since she was 16. She squares off against the rival family who took her mother’s life and she must find a way to stand up to them and her fierce father without jeopardizing the lives of the abuse survivors in the women’s shelter she runs.
Paramount Pictures is in talks with with Chris Pratt to star in a relaunch of its action franchise The Saint. Based on the character in the novels by Leslie Charteris, The Saint was originally adapted into a 1940s serial and then a TV series in the 1960s starring Roger Moore. Simon Templar, known as "The Saint" is a wealthy adventurer and fixer who takes on the criminal underworld.
Aisha Tyler (24, Criminal Mind) has been set to direct Vigilante, a female-themed thriller scripted by Irwin Winkler and Jose Ruisanchez. The project is described as a socially charged #MeToo era thriller that follows the journey of a young woman who, after suffering a brutal attack, channels her anger and grief into protecting others.
Peter Sarsgaard, Maya Hawke, and Betty Gabriel have joined Liev Schreiber, Marisa Tomei, and Alex Wolff in the indie dramatic thriller Human Capital, an adaption of Stephen Amidon’s novel which is being helmed by Mark Meyers. The film centers on the lives of two families, one middle-class and one privileged, as their lives intertwine across the social divide when two of their children suddenly begin a relationship that leads to a tragic accident.
The British Independent Film Awards has set a handful of early winners including a couple of crime dramas. Psychological noir thriller You Were Never Really Here (Amazon) took Best Music for Jonny Greenwood and Best Sound for Paul Davies. Layton’s heist picture American Animals (The Orchard) won Best Editing by Nick Fenton, Julian Hart, and Chris Gill.
An official trailer was released for The Informer, starring Joel Kinnaman as an ex-con who goes undercover and intentionally gets himself incarcerated again in order to infiltrate the mob at a maximum security prison.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
NBC has given a script commitment to Red Stick, a crime drama from bestselling author Patricia Cornwell and Sony Pictures TV. Written by Samantha Humphrey (S.W.A.T.), Red Stick is based on an idea by Cornwell and follows Dr. Annie Dodge who is summoned from New York to her hometown of Baton Rouge, LA, after the sudden death of her father, the city’s beloved coroner. Now, as she’s mourning the loss of her childhood hero, Annie finds herself reluctantly stepping into her father’s role to solve an ongoing murder while navigating the complicated waters of Bayou politics, Southern hospitality and a simmering past romance.
The peacock network also given a script commitment to The Bone Collector, based on the bestselling book series by Jeffery Deaver and the 1999 movie of the same name which starred Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Written by VJ Boyd and Mark Bianculli, The Bone Collector follows Lincoln Rhyme, a retired genius forensic criminologist left paralyzed after an accident on the job. When a harrowing case brings him back to the force, Rhyme partners up with an ambitious young detective, Amelia Sachs, to take down some of the most dangerous criminals in the U.S.
Fox has given a script commitment to Puller, an hour-long drama based on David Baldacci’s bestselling John Puller book series. Written by Bones executive producer Carla Kettner, Puller is described as an action-forward procedural thriller about John Puller, an investigator with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Puller, a decorated former Army Ranger, faces the most difficult case of his life when his brother, a convicted traitor, escapes from a maximum security prison. Together with Veronica Knox, an army intel specialist, Puller searches for his fugitive brother. In the book series, John and Veronica solve the most difficult of crimes while John secretly battles to restore his family honor.
Fox is also developing a female-centric Texas Rangers drama. Written by Matt Cook, the untitled project centers on Lauren Crawford Flynn, one of only two females in the legendary and notoriously tough Texas Rangers, who balances the demands of her intense, high stakes job in a male dominated world with the challenges of being a single mom to a young teenage daughter.
Joel Silver and his Silver Pictures Television have sold two crime drama projects to CBS, False Memories and Crooked Brooklyn. False Memories is inspired by Emmy Bryce’s article “False Memories and False Confessions: The Psychology of Imagined Crimes,” in Wired UK and centers on a forensic psychologist who uses her expertise in the malleability of human memory to investigate crime scenes. Crooked Brooklyn is inspired by Michael Vecchione and Jerry Schmetterer’s 2015 bestselling book Crooked Brooklyn: Taking Down Corrupt Judges, Dirty Politicians, Killers and Body Snatchers, and centers on a drive to ferret out corruption that leads to the DAs of the Brooklyn Rackets Division given badges and guns to investigate crime on the streets and prosecuting those crimes in the courtroom.
ABC has put in development the drama The Marriage Lie, inspired by Kimberly Belle’s bestselling book of the same name and adapted by writer Michael Cooney. The project centers on Iris and Will whose seven-year marriage seems idyllic. But on the morning Will flies out for a business trip to Florida, Iris’s happy world comes to an abrupt halt when she learns his name is on a passenger list not for Florida but on another headed to New York that has crashed. As Iris sets off on a desperate quest to uncover what her husband was keeping from her, the answers she finds shock her to her very core.
Netflix is working on a new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's thriller novel, Rebecca. It tells the story of a young woman (Lily James) who, on arriving at her husband's (Armie Hammer) imposing family estate on a bleak English coast, finds herself battling the shadow of his dead first wife, the mysterious Rebecca, whose legacy continues to haunt the house. In 1940, Alfred Hitchcock directed the iconic film version that starred Lawrence Oliver and Joan Fontaine.
Amazon Studios has closed an exclusive production deal with Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Television for eight thriller genre features which will all be connected thematically. The deal marks Amazon Studios’ first ever global-direct to service deal for feature length programs.The movies will be made by a diverse group of filmmakers and is being developed out of Amazon’s movie department.
With a fifth season currently in production and set to launch next year, Amazon announced the Titus Welliver-led series of Connelly’s beloved and hardboiled LAPD detective, Bosch, will be back for a Season 6. In addition to Welliver as the jazz loving Harry Bosch, the series also stars Jamie Hector as LAPD Detective Jerry Edgar, Amy Aquino as Lt. Grace Billets, Madison Lintz as Maddie Bosch, and Lance Reddick as Deputy Chief Irvin Irving.
Netflix has opted not to renew The Good Cop, its hourlong dramedy starring Tony Danza and Josh Groban. The Good Cop starred Danza as Tony Sr., 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.
CBS All Access, CBS’ SVOD and live streaming service, has given a straight-to-series order to the true-crime drama, Interrogation. Co-created by Swedish writer-producer Anders Weidemann (30 Degrees In February) and John Mankiewicz (House of Cards, Bosch), Interrogation is an original concept based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years, in which a young man was charged and convicted of brutally murdering his mother. Each episode is structured around an interrogation taken directly from the real police case files, with the goal of turning the viewer into a detective.
Hugh Grant has joined the cast of the HBO’s The Undoing, set to star opposite Nicole Kidman. Grant will play Jonathan Sachs, an acclaimed pediatric oncologist, devoted husband to Grace Sachs (Kidman) and doting father, whose past undergoes scrutiny when he suddenly disappears, leading to a chain of terrible revelations for his wife. Based on the book You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz, the six-episode series follows Grace in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster.
Stranger Things star David Harbour has joined the cast of the Chris Hemsworth action vehicle Dhaka for Netflix. The screenplay, written by Joe Russo, centers on the underworld of weapons dealers and traffickers, where a young boy becomes the pawn in a war between notorious drug lords. Trapped by kidnappers inside one of the world’s most impenetrable cities, his rescue beckons the unparalleled skill of a mercenary named Tyler Rake. But Rake is a broken man with nothing to lose, harboring a death wish that makes an already deadly mission near impossible.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, co-author of Mycroft and Sherlock, stopped by CBS's The Talk.
Crime novelist, poet, and jazz enthusiast John Harvey was one of the latest guests on BBC Radio's Private Passions podcast, hosted by Michael Berkeley.
Beyond the Cover welcomed Jon Land, author of the new Jessica Fletcher novel, Manuscript for Murder: a Murder, She Wrote novel.
The latest episode of Writer Types featured thriller writer Lee Child, creator of the Jack Reacher series, as well as Sara Gran with her new Claire DeWitt novel, The Infinite Blacktop. Also Peter Leonard talked about keeping alive his father Elmore's creation, Raylan Givens alive in Raylan Goes To Detroit.
In the Speaking of Mysteries podcast, Wiggins is back in The Red Ribbon, H.B. Lyle’s second installment of the continuing story of Sherlock Holmes’ Irregular-in-Chief’s career in Britain’s MI-5.
Host D.P. Lyle talked about "Mood and Tone in Crime Fiction" in the latest installment of CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction.
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