It’s the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:
THE BIG SCREEN
Alex Ross Perry is attached to write and direct Rest Stop, a feature adaptation of a Stephen King short story first published in Esquire in 2003. The project follows a novelist who pulls into a turnpike rest stop, where he witnesses a scene of domestic violence. The mystery writer, who publishes under a pseudonym, then assumes his alter ego and jumps into action. Perry's take on the story is described as “a propulsive cat-and-mouse thriller that follows the twisted journey of two women after a fateful encounter at a highway rest stop.”
Luther's Hermione Norris is set to star in the “high-concept” Australian thriller, Between Two Worlds. Norris will play Cate Walford, trapped in a tangled web of lies and manipulation with her vicious tycoon husband and their tempestuous home life. Through a shocking twist of fate, this dark and murky world collides with the seemingly warm and loving world of a widow and her two children—although nothing is quite as it first appears.
Gunpowder & Sky has acquired the U.S. rights to Villains, a dark comedic thriller. The film stars Jeffrey Donovan and Kyra Sedgwick playing two sadistic homeowners who hold a pair of amateur criminals (Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe) hostage after the young criminals break into their suburban home and stumble upon their dark secret.
Wesley Snipes is set to star in and produce the casino heist thriller, Payline, playing the villain in the film. Described as a project in the vein of Ocean’s Eleven and Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, Payline centers on a small-town casino that turns into a battleground after two groups of criminals attempt to rob it on the same night.
Bumblebee director Travis Knight is set to tackle the Mark Wahlberg-starring Six Billion Dollar Man (after helmer and co-writer, Damian Szifron, stepped down in 2017). The long-awaited project stars Wahlberg as Col. Steve Austin, a downed pilot who is saved by an operation that makes him part machine. The project is a big-screen adaptation of the classic 1970s TV show that starred Lee Majors.
Shea Whigham, Bruce Dern, and Zach Avery have joined the neo-noir thriller, The Gateway, alongside previously announced Olivia Munn, with Michele Civetta attached to direct. The Gateway follows Parker (Whigham), a downtrodden social worker in the grips of alcoholism, assigned to care for the daughter of single mother Dahlia (Munn). When husband Mike (Avery) is released early from prison and sweeps his family back into a world of crime, Parker intervenes and blurs the lines between professional obligations and personal desires. Outmatched and outgunned, Parker must seek help from the father who abandoned him as a child (Dern) to find redemption and help protect the only family he’s ever known.
Dear White People star Marque Richardson has been cast opposite Simon Pegg, Lily Collins, Connie Nielsen, and Chace Crawford in the indie thriller, Inheritance, from director Vaughn Stein. The film 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.
A trailer was unveiled for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, starring Ryan Reynolds as the voice of the titular character in the live-action mystery-fantasy film. The storyline: when ace detective Harry Goodman goes mysteriously missing, his 21-year-old son Tim (played by Justice Smith) joins forces with Harry’s former Pokémon partner, Detective Pikachu. Finding that they are uniquely equipped to communicate with one another, Tim and Pikachu join forces on a thrilling adventure to unravel the tangled mystery
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
The Peabody board has selected nine entertainment winners for its 78th edition of its Peabody Awards, which will be handed out May 18 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. The winners for programs released in 2018 include Showtime’s dramedy hitman series, Barry; BBC America’s serial killer drama, Killing Eve; and FX’s spy series, The Americans.
John Cusack just landed his first series regular role for television, joining Gillian Flynn's new Amazon project, Utopia (adapted from U.K.'s Channel 4 series of the same name). Utopia follows a group of young adults who meet online and are mercilessly hunted by a shadowy deep state organization after they come into possession of a near mythical cult underground graphic novel. When they discover the conspiracy theories in the comic's pages may be real, they're forced into the dangerous, unique and ironic position of saving the world. Cusack is set to play Dr. Kevin Christie, who altruistically wants to change the world through science.
In February, when NBC renewed all three Chicago series for next season, Chicago Fire was picked up for an eighth season without its stars, Jesse Spencer and Taylor Kinney, whose current contracts were up at the end of this season. But fans of the show can rejoice now that the duo have closed two-year deals to continue on the firefighter drama. The deals for the three other original cast members, Eamonn Walker, Monica Raymund, and David Eigenberg, expired at the end of Season 6 last spring. Raymund opted to move on (and has signed up for a new series, Starz’s Hightown), while Walker and Eigenberg entered new two-year contracts that go through the upcoming eighth season.
In other “Chicago” franchise news, Chicago P.D. star Jon Seda is exiting, along with departing Chicago Med co-stars Colin Donnell and Norma Kuhling. All three are leaving as series regulars but could return for guest appearances. According to sources, the cast departures stem from creative reasons related to the characters’ story evolution.
Vera Cherny (The Americans) is set for a recurring role on the fourth season of USA Network’s Queen of the South, which stars Alice Braga. Queen of the South is based on the bestselling book La Reina del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and tells the story of Teresa Mendoza (Braga), a woman forced to run from a Mexican cartel and seek refuge in America. Cherny will play Oksana Volkova, "a tough-as-nails, woman of big appetites and no apologies." She has close ties to the Russian mob in New York and controls the distribution of molly in Atlanta.
Netflix has released the official trailer for When They See Us, the four-part miniseries from Ava DuVernay that tells the story of the Central Park Five, five young black men wrongly convicted of rape and murder in New York City in 1989.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Criminal Mischief: The Art and Science of Crime Fiction, with host Dr. DP Lyle, featured “DNA and Twins” in its latest episode.
The final Season Four guest on the Crime Cafe podcast is Joe Lansdale, author of over thirty novels including the Hap and Leonard series that was made into a series for the Sundance Channel, as well as other thrillers adapted for TV and film.
BBC Radio's Thinking Allowed podcast took at look at “Detective fiction - homicide and social media.”
Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts, Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste, chatted about pseudonyms, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year longlist, and more.
Beyond the Cover welcomed authors Robert Dugoni (The Eighth Sister) and Daniel Palmer (Saving Meghan).
The featured guests on Writer Types included David Swinson, talking about the conclusion of his Frank Marr series with the latest, Trigger; E.A. Aymar with his new novel, The Unrepentant; and Michele W. Miller with her novel, Widows-In-Law.
The Spybrary interviewed author Aly Monroe about her Peter Cotton novel, Black Bear, and also discussed other books in the spy lit landscape.
Comments