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
Fox Searchlight is making a deal to acquire Solitary. The film is based on a memoir by Albert Woodfox about the 43 years he spent in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s Angola Prison following the 1972 murder of a prison guard he steadfastly denied committing. Woodfox was released in 2016 and used the $90,000 he was paid for reparation for cruel and unusual punishment from the state of Louisiana to buy a house in New Orleans, where he lives quietly today. Much of the tale is about his kinship with two other wrongly accused men with whom he managed to communicate and organize protests and hunger strikes and eventually reforms at Angola. Mahershala Ali is attaching to be executive producer of the film, with the intention to play Woodfox.
Peter Dinklage, coming off his run on HBO’s Game of Thrones, is in talks to star opposite Rosamund Pike in the thriller, I Care a Lot. Pike plays Marla Grayson, a successful legal guardian with a knack for using the law to her benefit and her clients’ detriment. But when she cherry-picks her seemingly perfect client, she soon realizes looks are deceiving. Details on Dinklage’s potential role are being kept under wraps.
Adam Nagaitis (Terror and Chernobyl) has landed a significant part in Gunpowder Milkshake, joining Karen Gillan, Paul Giamatti, Lena Headey, and Michelle Yeoh in the cast. Navot Papushado and Ehud Lavski wrote the screenplay, with Papushado directing the action-thriller about a group of female assassins that come together after a hit goes wrong.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
NBC has given a production commitment to Langdon, a prequel drama based on Dan Brown’s thriller novel, The Lost Symbol. A joint project of Daniel Cerone, CBS Studios, Universal TV, and Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment, the project follows the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who finds himself pulled into a series of deadly puzzles when his mentor is kidnapped.
Baby Driver star Ansel Elgort is set to headline the crime drama, Tokyo Vice, which has received a 10-episode straight-to-series order from WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming platform. It is based on the book by Jake Adelstein with a script from Tony-winning playwright J.T. Rogers (Oslo) and Endeavor Content. The project centers around Adelstein’s non-fiction first-hand account of an American journalist (Elgort) who embeds himself into the Tokyo Vice police squad to reveal corruption.
Fox Networks Group has picked up the UK rights to the action drama, L.A.’s Finest, which stars Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba. The 13-episode series, based in Jerry Bruckheimer’s Bad Boys universe, follows Burnett (Union), who last was seen in Miami taking down a drug cartel. She leaves her complicated past behind to become an LAPD detective and is paired with a new partner, Nancy McKenna (Alba), a working mom with an equally complex past. These two women don’t agree on much, but they find common ground when it comes to taking on the most dangerous criminals in Los Angeles.
ITV is bringing the six-part thriller Tenacity, based on J.S. Law's novel, to the small screen. When a dead submariner is discovered aboard the British nuclear submarine, Tenacity, the disgraced military detective Danielle ‘Dan’ Lewis is sent to investigate the accident. But when the case turns to murder it puts her in conflict with Tenacity’s crew, her Navy superiors, and into the crosshairs of an assassin who has infiltrated her nuclear base with an agenda that will not only destroy national security but kill Dan and everyone she loves.
Lucifer has been renewed for a fifth and final season on Netflix. Based on the Vertigo comics character, Lucifer follows the fallen angel (Tom Ellis) to Los Angeles when he grows bored of being the Lord of Hell and teams up with LAPD detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German) to help stop criminals. The series also stars Rachael Harris, Aimee Garcia, Kevin Alejandro, and Lesley-Ann Brandt.
The first three seasons of cult favorite Veronica Mars will stream on Hulu starting July 1, ahead of the Hulu Original returning for its fourth season on July 26. Veronica Mars is a noir mystery set in Neptune, California, and stars Kristen Bell as a student who moonlights as a private investigator, working under her detective father to solve cases and an overarching mystery tied to them.
Syfy has opted not to renew Happy! for a third season and Deadly Class for a second, although both shows are being shopped to other broadcasters. Happy! follows Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni), an intoxicated, corrupt ex-cop turned hit man whose life is forever changed by a tiny, relentlessly positive, imaginary blue winged horse named Happy (Patton Oswalt). Deadly Class follows the story of Marcus (Benjamin Wadsworth), a teen living on the streets who is recruited into Kings Dominion, an elite private academy where the world’s top crime families send their next generations.
Amazon has opted not to order a fourth season of drama series, Sneaky Pete. Created by Bryan Cranston and David Shore, Sneaky Pete stars Emmy nominee Giovanni Ribisi as con man Marius, who left prison only to find himself hunted by the vicious gangster he once robbed. With nowhere else to turn, he took cover from his past by assuming the identity of his cellmate Pete.
Hallmark Movies and Mysteries is debuting two new movie premieres in June: Picture Perfect Mysteries, about a small-town wedding photographer who finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery when the groom is shot dead during the first dance; and Mystery 101: Playing Dead, about a crime fiction professor and a detective who join forces to solve the murder of an actor.
Melanie Field (Heathers) has been cast in a regular role in TNT's The Angel of Darkness, a limited series based on the sequel to Caleb Carr's bestselling novel, The Alienist. Newcomer Rosy McEwen is also set for a recurring role in the follow-on series, which includes returning lead cast members from The Alienist, Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning. The new storyline follows 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.
Newly picked up CBS drama series, Tommy, starring Edie Falco, is making a casting change for David Fierro, who co-starred in the pilot. The series, from the creators of Bull, stars Falco as Abigail "Tommy" Thomas, a former high-ranking NYPD officer who becomes the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles. The character played by Fierro in the pilot, which will be recast, is Buddy, the brilliant, manipulative mayor of Los Angeles, who becomes a rival for power with the city’s first female police chief. The series-regular cast also includes Michael Chernus, Adelaide Clemens, Russell G. Jones, Olivia Lucy Phillip, and Joseph Lyle Taylor.
Kim Dickens (Deadwood) has been cast as a series regular in Briarpatch, the USA Network’s crime anthology series based on the Ross Thomas novel. The project centers on Allegra "Pick" Dill (Rosario Dawson), a tenacious and highly skilled investigator working for an ambitious young senator in Washington, D.C. When her 10-years-younger sister, a homicide detective, is killed by a car bomb, Allegra returns to her corrupt Texas hometown. Dickens will play Chief of Police Eve Raytek, an authoritative firecracker who is committed to finding out who killed Allegra’s sister.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
The Strahan & Sara show on ABC welcomed bestseller James Patterson, co-author of Unsolved (written with David Ellis).
Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham spent some time talking about mystery books by LGBTQ+ authors, in honor of Pride month.
Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Israel-based Mike Omer, the journalist and game developer turned author of the Zoe Bentley Mystery Series and the Glenmore Park Mystery Series.
Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro spoke with Matt Phillips about his latest book, Countdown.
The Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, had the tables turned as he was interviewed by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn podcast.
GAMES & GRAPHIC NOVELS
DC Comics announced a new comic book series from their DC Black Label imprint, Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity, written by #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author Kami Garcia (author of Unbreakable, X-Files: Agents of Chaos) and artists Mike Mayhew (Star Wars) and Mico Suayan (Bloodshot: Reborn). The nine-issue psychological thriller follows Harley Quinn, the young and brilliant forensic psychiatrist and profiler consulting for the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD), as she pursues a vicious killer terrorizing the city. She has no idea the investigation will bring her face-to-face with the most notorious serial killer in Gotham’s history—the Joker.
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