Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to a brand-new Monday and a new update of the latest crime drama news:

AWARDS

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts handed out their annual BAFTA awards yesterday. Crime drama winners include Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director of Producer, which was won by the psychological thriller Beast for Michael Pearce (Writer/Director) and Lauren Dark (Producer); and Best Adapted Screenplay went to BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel, Kevin Willmott).

THE BIG SCREEN

Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams has been cast in Julius Berg’s ’90s thriller, The Owners, based on the comic book from Hermann Huppen and Yves H. The story is set in rural England in the early 1990s and follows Nathan and Terry, who are tracked down by an out-of-town sociopath names Gaz and forced to rob an elderly doctor and his wife.

Ezra Miller (Justice League and Fantastic Beasts) is attached to star in thriller The Mourner, based on the Japanese novel by Arata Tendo, with Casper Kiriya (Last Knights) set to direct from a script by Robin Shushan. The Mourner follows a jaded and embittered homicide detective on the trail of murderous sex traffickers, who discovers new spiritual meaning in her life when she comes across a mystical young man (Miller) whose calling in life is to mourn the dead who have no one else to mourn them.

Lily Collins will join Simon Pegg to star in the thriller Inheritance, taking over the role that Kate Mara was originally set to play. From a script by Matthew Kennedy, Inheritance explores what happens when the patriarch of a wealthy and powerful family suddenly passes away, leaving his wife and daughter with a shocking secret inheritance that threatens to unravel and destroy their lives.

Anne Heche and Jason Patric are joining Thomas Jane in the cast for the upcoming action-thriller, Hour Of Lead, from writer-director Peter Facinelli (Breaking & Entering). The story charts the fallout after a ten-year-old girl goes missing from an RV park. The girl’s father (Jane) and mother (Heche) take justice into their own hands, stopping at nothing to track their daughter down, but as they fall deeper into the search, a tragic revelation is uncovered, deepening the mystery of the girl’s disappearance.

Bella Thorne is set to star in writer-director Joshua Caldwell’s crime feature Southland, about two young lovers who rob their way across the southland, posting their exploits to social media and gaining fame and followers as a result. Obsessed with their rising number of followers, they embark on a dangerous adventure together that leads to robbery, cop chases and murder.

Ruby Rose is attached to star in the action-thriller Doorman for director Ryuhei Kitamura. The film tells the story of an officer in the Marines who becomes traumatized while serving her country and returns home looking for an opportunity to heal. She seeks refuge as a doorman at a labyrinthine, historic, New York apartment building but discovers that mercenaries are intent on destroying everything in their way to retrieve precious art hidden in the building walls.

Game of Thrones alum Lena Headey's next project is Gunpowder Milkshake, which Aharon Keshales & Navot Papushado will direct for Studiocanal and The Picture Company. Headey joins Karen Gillan in the high-concept action thriller with a rich mythology that revolves around a multi-generational ensemble cast.

Paramount has announced that Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse will hit theaters on Sept. 18, 2020. The film stars Michael B. Jordan as John Kelly, one of the recurring characters in the Jack Ryan universe who is a former NAVY Seal turned CIA ops guy. The role was played in previous adaptations by Willem Dafoe in 1994’s Clear and Present Danger and Liev Schreiber in 2002’s The Sum of All Fears.

Warner Brothers released the first trailer for the Shaft reboot directed by Tim Story and written by Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow. Samuel L. Jackson and Richard Roundtree reprise their roles as the slick detective John Shaft to usher in the next generation, Shaft’s son, as played by Jesse T. Usher.

A trailer dropped for writer-director Rohit Karn Batra’s crime thriller, Line Of Descent, starring Brendan Fraser, Abhay Deol, Ronit Roy, Neeraj Kabi, Prem Chopra and Max Beesley. The film follows an established Indian mafia family after the death of their patriarch.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie and Anthony Peckham have boarded The President Is Missing, the drama series adaptation of the novel by President Bill Clinton and James Patterson. The story centers on a powerless and politically aimless who Vice President unexpectedly becomes President and walks right into a secret world-threatening crisis, both inside and outside the White House.

Netflix has placed a series order for an eight-episode adaptation of crime author Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her. Homeland director Lesli Linka Glatter will direct the series, with writer Charlotte Stoudt (Homeland and House of Cards) penning the scripts and acting as showrunner. As the logline states, "When a Saturday afternoon trip to the mall with her mother suddenly explodes into violence, an adrift young woman’s conception of her mother is forever changed. As figures from her mother’s past start to resurface, she is forced to go on the run and on that journey, begins to piece together the truth of her mother’s previous identity and uncovers secrets of her childhood."

HBO has put into development a new drama series from Power creator Courtney A. Kemp about a group of dirty cops in New York City. Titled Dirty Thirty, the project is inspired by the true story of a gang of cops operating out of New York’s 30th Precinct in the 1990s and follows a crime wave infecting the highest levels of municipal government, corrupting the justice system and defining a city.

Fox has ordered more drama pilots, including Deputy and the AI thriller drama neXT. Deputy is an hour-long police procedural from Bright helmer David Ayer and Aquaman writer Will Beall and centers on Deputy Bill Hollister, a career lawman who’s very comfortable kicking down doors and utterly lost in a staff meeting. But when the LA County Sheriff drops dead, Bill becomes acting sheriff of Los Angeles County, in charge of 10,000 sworn deputies policing a modern Wild West. neXt is described as a propulsive, fact-based thriller grounded in the latest A.I. research and features a brilliant but paranoid former tech CEO who joins a Homeland Cybersecurity Agent to stop the world’s first artificial intelligence crisis.

AMC has opened a writers' room for 61st Street, a potential new series executive produced by Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society and exec produced by Peter Moffett, who wrote the British drama Criminal Justice (the basis of the HBO series The Night Of). Set in present-day Chicago, 61st Street follows Moses Johnson, a promising high school athlete, who is swept up into the infamously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system. Taken by the police as a gang member, he soon finds himself in the eye of the storm as police and prosecutors seek revenge for the death of an officer during a drug bust gone wrong.

A reboot of classic British police procedural Bergerac is being developed by Paramount Network International. The series previously starred John Nettles, later known for his role in Midsomer Murders, as a detective on the small island of Jersey. It ran for nine seasons and 87 episodes on the BBC between 1981 and 1991 and was created by Robert Banks Stewart. Updated for the present day, it will deal with "contemporary stories-of-the-week that run alongside a strong serial spine.”

Julian McMahon and Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes are set to star in FBI: Most Wanted, the planned spinoff of Dick Wolf’s freshman CBS drama series, FBI. McMahon will play Jess LaCroix, an "agent’s agent" who’s at the top of his game and oversees the team from the FBI’s Most Wanted Unit, which is assigned the most extreme and egregious cases. Castle-Hughes will play Lynn Khanna, a cowboy boot-wearing FBI analyst from a conservative Dallas family who is a master of data-mining and social engineering.

Mykelti Williamson has been tapped to co-star opposite Malin Akerman in NBC’s legal drama pilot, Prism. Prism is inspired by Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese period psychological thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa, and is described as "a provocative exploration of a murder trial in which every episode is told through the perspective of a different key person involved. Each new version of the facts ratchets up the mystery and the suspense, calling into question everything we have seen so far and asking, Is the right person on trial?"

Levy Tran (Shameless) has been cast in a major recurring role on CBS’ action drama series, MacGyver, playing a new character that would help fill the void left by the departure of series co-lead George Eads. Tran, whose first episode airs February 15, will play Desiree Nguyen (Desi), who joins the Phoenix Foundation to protect MacGyver (Lucas Till) and his team on their global missions.

The Office co-creator Stephen Merchant will topline the British crime drama The Barking Murders, along with Sheridan Smith and Jaime Winstone. The BBC One drama tells the true story of the notorious Essex crime spree, with Merchant playing serial rapist and killer Stephen Port, while Smith plays Sarah Sak, the mother of Anthony Walgate, his first victim. Winstone, daughter of Ray Winstone, plays Donna Taylor, sister of victim Jack Taylor.

Rosanna Arquette has joined Ratched, Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix series starring Sarah Paulson as a younger version of the diabolical Nurse Ratched from the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Arquette will have a multi-episode arc in the origins story that begins in 1947 and follows Ratched’s (Paulson) journey and evolution from nurse to full-fledged monster. The all-star cast also includes Sharon Stone, Cynthia Nixon, Finn Wittrock, Jon Jon Briones, Charlie Carver, Judy Davis, Harriet Harris, Hunter Parrish, Amanda Plummer, and Corey Stoll.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

For Novel Suspects, bestselling author Megan Abbott discussed her latest book, Give Me Your Hand, female friendship, and the interesting ways that women communicate and exert power differently from men.

Michael Connelly's latest Murder Book true-crime podcast focuses on a reputed gang member who beat a murder charge decades ago and went on to land a job as a police officer but was convicted of the 30-year-old killing of Jade Clark after DNA evidence put him at the crime scene.

Suspense Radio Inside Edition featured Keven James Breaux and Lisa Gardner. Gardner's latest, Never Tell, is the latest in her series with D.D. Warren and Flora Dane; Breaux writes in several genres including horror, suspense, and fantasy.

The latest episode of Mysteryrat’s Maze podcast featured the mystery short story, "The Way to a Man's Heart," a twisted take on Valentine's Day written by mystery author Merrilee Robson and read by actor Sean Hopper.

Words and Nerds welcomed author Stuart Turton to chat about his novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and the murder mystery genre.

Amanda Knox will host a true-crime podcast series, “The Truth About True Crime,” that will serve as a companion to SundanceTV’s upcoming documentaries. Knox was profiled in her own true-crime documentary for Netflix in 2016, which looked at her conviction and acquittal by Italian courts of the brutal killing of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

The latest Criminal Mischief: the Art & Science of Crime Fiction, hosted by DP Lyle took a look at "Fentanyl—A Most dangerous Game."

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused this week on "Diamond Jubilee, Grand Juries, and Cultural Diversity."

On Episode 67 of the Spybrary Podcast, author David Holman shares more about his Alex Swan trilogy novels.

THEATER

The King's Theatre in Edinburgh is staging a new adaptation of the much-loved film The Lady Vanishes (directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave). The story centers on socialite Iris, who's traveling home to England on the train when an accident introduces her to the mild-mannered Miss Froy. After her companion suddenly disappears, Iris is perplexed to find that all the other passengers deny ever having seen her. With the help of urbane musician Max she turns detective and together they become drawn into a complex web of European intrigue as they try to solve the mystery of why the lady vanished.

The Cambridge Arts Theatre is presenting Ian Rankin's Rebus: Long Shadows through February 16. Detective Inspector John Rebus is retired but the shadows of his former life still follow him through the streets of Edinburgh. Whisky helped but now he’s denying himself that pleasure, but when the daughter of a murder victim appears outside his flat, he’s back on the case and off the wagon.

Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap is currently being staged at the Metropolis Performing Arts Center in Arlington Heights, Illinois, with a run through March 16. In the longest-running play in London’s West End, a group of strangers become stranded in an English country boarding house, cut off by a sudden snow storm. They soon discover, to their horror, that there is a murderer in their midst.

The Sarasota, Florida, Studio Theatre's latest production is a staging of the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, the play by Simon Stephens adapted from Mark Haddon's novel. The story revolves around an autistic teenager who sets out to investigate the bizarre death of a neighbor’s dog, inspiring a series of events that expose far greater mysteries. The production runs through March 29.

Comments

[Chas.]

Wow. There are some really interesting projects in progress and in planning. I wish I had the budget to travel to some of them!