AWARDS
The Directors Guild of America announced the winners of their annual awards over the weekend. Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Limited Series was won by Ben Stiller for his work on Escape at Dannemora. The film is based on the true-life tale of two prison inmates, Richard Matt and David Sweat, who become entangled in the life of a married female prison employee who aided their escape in 2015.
THE BIG SCREEN
Julius Onah’s psychological thriller, Luce, has sold to NEON and Topic Studios at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is based on JC Lee’s play and centers on Amy and Peter Edgar (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) who adopted their son Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) from war-torn Eritrea 10 years ago. Luce is now an all-star student athlete, beloved by everyone. After a series of encounters with his teacher, Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer), questions about who Luce really is begin to emerge.
Angelina Jolie is set to star in Those Who Wish Me Dead, the second film directed by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. The project is based on a book by Michael Koryta which follows a 14-year-old boy who witnesses a brutal murder. The boy is issued a false identity and hidden in a wilderness skills program for troubled teens while the killers are slaughtering anyone who gets in their way in a methodical quest to reach him.
Oscar winners Sam Rockwell, Octavia Spencer, and Allison Janney have been set to star in The Heart, from writer-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. The film centers on Joe (Rockwell) and Lucy (Spencer) who take the job of delivering a human heart from New York to Florida in 24 hours. When they realize their delivery is destined for a black-market buyer who illegally skipped the donor list, they attempt to reroute it to its rightful recipient, but they are soon hunted down by multiple insane criminals — including the greedy millionaire buyer, his scorned brother, and Lucy’s own drug-dealing ex-boss (Janney).
Mel Gibson and Ready Player One's Tye Sheridan are in final negotiations to star in the thriller, Black Flies, which is based on a novel by Shannon Burke. Black Flies tells the story of a young paramedic, Ollie Cross (Sheridan), navigating his first year on the job. He’s partnered with Rutkovsky (Gibson), an experienced medic who thrusts Ollie into the harsh realities of New York’s inner-city streets with high crime rates, homelessness, and widespread drug use.
Paramount has set release dates for the seventh and eighth installments of the “Mission: Impossible” series. The still-untitled “Mission: Impossible” 7 will hit theaters July 23, 2021, with part 8 coming just over a year later, on Aug. 5, 2022. The news comes just two weeks after the announcement that Christopher McQuarrie will return to write and direct the next two films in the Tom Cruise-starring action series.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
USA Network has picked up to series its drama pilot Dare Me, based on Megan Abbott's 2012 novel of the same name. Set in the world of competitive high school cheerleading, it follows the fraught relationship between two best friends (Herizen Guardiola and Mario Kelly) after a new coach (Willa Fitzgerald) arrives to bring their team to prominence. While the girls’ friendship is put to the test, their young lives are changed forever when a shocking crime rocks their quiet suburban world.
ABC handed out formal orders for a reboot of Dick Wolf's New York Undercover, a sequel that picks up 20 years after the end of the iconic series, which ran from 1994-98. It will follow detectives Nat Gilmore and Melissa Ortiz as they investigate the city's most dangerous criminals, from Harlem to Battery Park, and allows some cast members from the original show to reprise their roles.
Bryan Cranston has signed on to star in and executive produce Showtime’s limited legal series, Your Honor, based on the popular Israeli drama, Kvodo. It hails from the creators of two acclaimed legal drama series, including Peter Moffat, whose BAFTA-winning Criminal Justice was the basis for HBO’s Emmy-winning limited series The Night Of, and The Good Wife's Robert and Michelle King. The 10-episode series rips through all strata of New Orleans society and features Cranston as a respected judge whose son is involved in a hit-and-run that leads to a high-stakes game of lies, deceit and impossible choices.
CBS has ordered the legal drama Courthouse from writer Greg Spottiswood (Remedy) and Warner Bros. TV. Courthouse pulls back the curtain on the court system and "follows the dedicated, chaotic, hopeful, and sometimes absurd lives of the judges, assistant district attorneys, and public defenders as they work with bailiffs, clerks, cops and jurors to bring justice to the people of Los Angeles."
CBS also ordered a pilot for Frankenstein, a police procedural show, which centers on a San Francisco homicide detective who’s mysteriously brought back to life after being killed in the line of duty. But as he resumes his old life, he and his wife realize he isn’t the same person he used to be and they zero in on the strange man behind his resurrection – Dr. Victor Frankenstein.
Amazon Studios has acquired The Report, the drama written and directed by Scott Z. Burns, which stars Adam Driver, Annette Benning, Jon Hamm, Ted Levin, Maura Tierney, and Michael C. Hall. It tells the true story of Daniel Jones’ exhaustive six-year investigation into the CIA’s use of torture on detainees suspected of terrorist activities.
Dick Wolf is expanding his CBS empire with a spinoff of his recently renewed freshman procedural FBI, a show to be titled FBI: Most Wanted. As that title would suggest, the spinoff follows the department of the FBI tasked with tracking and capturing the criminals on its Most Wanted list.
Fox has given a pilot order to one-hour police drama Prodigal Son, described as a "fresh take on a crime franchise with a provocative and outrageous lead character and darkly comedic tone." It centers on criminal psychologist Malcolm Bright, who knows how killers think because his father was a notorious serial killer called “The Surgeon.” He will use his twisted genius to help the NYPD solve crimes and stop killers, all while dealing with a manipulative mother, annoyingly normal sister, a homicidal father still looking to bond with his prodigal son, and his own constantly evolving neuroses.
Channel 4 is making the four-part crime drama Deadwater Fell (wt), which is from Broadchurch producer Kudos and Grantchester writer Daisy Coulam. It is a forensic examination of a tragedy and its effects after a seemingly perfect and happy family is murdered by someone they know and trust, and cracks appear on the surface of a supposedly idyllic Scottish community.
David Strathairn (McMafia) is set for a lead role opposite Peter Sarsgaard in CBS All Access’ straight-to-series true crime drama, Interrogation. The project is 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.
ABC has ordered the drama pilot Stumptown, inspired by the graphic novels published by Oni Press. It follows Dex Parios, a strong, assertive, and unapologetically sharp-witted Army veteran working as a P.I. in Portland, Oregon. With a complicated personal history and only herself to rely on, she solves other people’s messes with a blind eye toward her own.
Richard Armitage has been tapped to star in The Stranger, an eight-episode Netflix series based on Harlan Coben’s novel. Armitage stars as Adam Price who has a good life, two wonderful sons, and a watertight marriage, until one night a stranger sits next to him in a bar and tells him a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne. Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne’s deception, and realizes that if he doesn’t make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he’s stumbled into will not only ruin lives—it will end them.
Netflix has hired Victoria Pedretti as the female lead opposite Penn Badgley on the upcoming second season of the breakout hit psychological thriller series You. In the Los Angeles-set Season 2, Pedretti will play Love Quinn, an aspiring chef working as a produce manager in a high-end grocery store. She is also tending to a deep grief — and when she meets Joe Goldberg (Badgley), she senses a shared knowledge of profound, life-changing loss.
In a competitive situation, Netflix has landed Indian anthology drama series Delhi Crime in a two-season order. The series (original title Delhi Crime Story) is inspired by and follows the notorious December 2012 investigation by the Delhi Police into the horrific gang rape of a young woman, which reverberated across India and the world.
American Vandal alum Tyler Alvarez is set for a recurring role opposite Kristen Bell in Hulu’s revival of Veronica Mars, from original series creator Rob Thomas. In the revival, spring breakers are getting murdered in Neptune, thereby decimating the seaside town’s lifeblood tourist industry. Alvarez will play Juan-Diego De La Cruz, a member of the Pacific Coast Highway biker gang that often find themselves in trouble with Veronica Mars (Bell).
AMC will simulcast season two of BBC America’s Killing Eve when the series returns in April. The series revolves around Eve (Oh), an MI6 operative, and psychopath assassin Villanelle (Comer). In the second season, the action picks up just 36 seconds after the end of last season’s finale, as Villanelle has disappeared and Eve having no idea if the woman she stabbed is alive or dead. With both of them in deep trouble, Eve has to find Villanelle before someone else does.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste chatted about Marie Kondo (the blogger who recently said you shouldn't own more than 30 books), ventriloquist dummies, reading in pubs, small pens from Argos, and the author photo Luca really wants.
The first episode of Michael Connelly's true-crime podcast Murder Book profiled the killing of Jade Clark in Hollywood, which was LAPD homicide detective Rick Jackson's longest case.
Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer Matt Coyle, Anthony Award-winning author of the Rick Cahill series, on the Crime Cafe.
Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham discussed the Agatha awards and Edgar Award nominees, more adaptation news, and some mysteries written by Black authors.
The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused on "APB Email, Human Trafficking, and Children of the Night."
High Plains Public Radio's Radio Readers Book Club featured an episode titled "Poe Started It All."
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