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
Lionsgate has acquired rights to Deon Taylor’s psychological thriller, Fatale, written and produced by David Loughery, and starring two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, Michael Ealy, Mike Colter, and Tyrin Turner. Fatale centers on a married man who finds himself living a nightmare as he is relentlessly compromised, out-witted and morally manipulated by a mysterious woman with whom he had a wild one-night stand. How far will he go to save his marriage from his mistake?
The Warner Brothers sequel to 2017's Murder on the Orient Express is lining up an impressive creative team. Like the first film, Death on the Nile will be directed by Kenneth Branagh who will also reprise his role as Hercule Poirot. Gal Gadot and Armie Hammer have also signed on to the cast, with Russell Brand currently circling a role in the film, as well. Michael Green, who also worked on Logan, Blade Runner 2049, and Alien: Covenant, is writing the script. Death on the Nile follows vacationing Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who must set aside his leisure time to solve the murder of a young heiress.
Emmy nominee Rupert Friend (Homeland) and rapper-turned-actor Cliff "Method Man" Smith have joined Waldo, the Tim Kirkby-directed film based on the novel Last Looks by Howard Michael Gould. Mel Gibson and Charlie Hunnam star in the pic, about a disgraced LAPD detective (Hunnam) who’s spent the past three years living off the grid. He’s reluctantly pulled back into his old life by a former lover in order to solve the murder of an eccentric celebrity’s wife.
Aidan Quinn, who co-starred in all seven seasons of the CBS drama Elementary, has signed on to star in Spiked, an indie drama inspired by the real-life events surrounding Arizona based newspaper-publisher Joseph Soldwedel. Juan Martinez Vera wrote the screenplay and is directing the film, which centers on a migrant worker's murder that leads to a feud and a dirty fight for justice between a newspaper owner and the chief of police. Deirdre Lovejoy (Blacklist, The Wire), Danay Garcia (Prison Break), and Carlos Gomez (Law & Order True Crime) round out the cast.
Liam Neeson is set to star in The Ice Road, an action adventure film written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh. Neeson will play a big-rig ice road driver who, after a remote diamond mine collapses in the far northern regions of Canada, must lead an impossible rescue mission over a frozen ocean to save the trapped miners. Contending with thawing waters and a massive storm, they discover the real threat is one they never saw coming.
Michael Rooker, who played Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy, has joined the cast of Universal’s Fast & Furious 9, playing a character named Buddy in the action sequel. He joins fellow newcomer to the franchise John Cena, as well as returning stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Charlize Theron, Helen Mirren, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, and Ludacris.
Bond 25 finally has an official title, No Time To Die. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga and once again starring Daniel Craig in his final outing as James Bond, No Time To Die finds Bond having left active service and enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.
Universal has set a January 15, 2021 release date for 355, the ensemble spy thriller directed and co-written by Simon Kinberg and starring Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger, and Fan Bingbing. The hope is to launch a franchise based on an idea by Chastain of a Bourne Identity-like thriller focused on female spies from agencies around the world.
A trailer was released for Motherless Brooklyn, starring Edward Norton as a P.I. with Tourette syndrome trying to solve his mentor's murder.
A trailer dropped for Villains, starring Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe as two burglars on the lam who break into the house of a wealthy couple (Jeffrey Donovan and Kyra Sedgwick), only to find out they’re not the bad guys in this story. As they explore the house, they discover a young girl chained up in the basement, and once the home’s owners realize they know their secret, they fight back and make Skarsgård and Monroe their prisoners.
There's also a new trailer for The Report, starring Adam Driver as Daniel J. Jones who uncovers the lengths to which the nation’s top intelligence agency went to destroy evidence, subvert the law, and hide a brutal secret from the American public.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Netflix is teaming with Tony Ayres (The Slap) and producer David Heyman for the thriller, Clickbait. The eight-episode series, to be shot in Melbourne, "explores the ways in which our most dangerous and uncontrolled impulses are fueled in the age of social media, and reveals the ever widening fractures we find between our virtual and real life personas."
Walter Presents is launching another French crime show this autumn, the fast-paced procedural Cain, which will stream on All 4. The series stars Bruno Debrandt as a disabled detective in sunny Marseilles who wheels his way through tough investigations with wit, charm and a bit of rule-breaking.
USA Network has put in development Philly Reign, a 1980s drama executive produced by Mary J. Blige, who will not star in the title role, although she may have a supporting/recurring role. Written by JaNeika & JaSheika James, Philly Reign is inspired by the life of Thelma Wright and her self-published memoir that follows her journey from suburban housewife to drug queenpin in under five years after the death of Wright’s husband left her two choices: let her family starve—or take over the family business. With equal parts grit and grace, she forces her way to the top of the international drug game to build one of the largest cocaine and heroin operations of the 1980s.
House and The Night Manager star Hugh Laurie will play a British politician in the four-part thriller drama for the BBC, Roadkill. The project is about self-made, forceful and charismatic politician Peter Laurence (Laurie), whose public and private life seems to be falling apart—or rather is being picked apart by his enemies. As the personal revelations spiral, he is shamelessly untroubled by guilt or remorse, expertly walking a high wire between glory and catastrophe as he seeks to further his own agenda while others plot to bring him down.
Carter MacIntyre (Benched), Adam J. Harrington (Dirty John) and Terrence Terrell (Giants) are set for a recurring roles on the upcoming sixth season of Amazon’s Bosch. Based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels, Bosch stars Titus Welliver, as homicide Detective Harry Bosch, as well as Jamie Hector, Amy Aquino, Madison Lintz, and Lance Reddick. Both MacIntyre and Harrington will play FBI agents working murder investigations on Bosch’s turf. Terrell will play Marvel, a Jamaican gangster.
BBC One has unveiled its latest programming slate including Inside Man, a death row drama from Sherlock writer Steven Moffat, and the period thriller, Ridley Road, from Barry writer Sarah Solemani. Inside Man is a four-part mini-series where a prisoner on death row in the U.S. and a woman trapped in a cellar under an English vicarage cross paths in the most unexpected way. Ridley Road is a four-part thriller adapted from Jo Bloom’s novel, Shindler, that tells the story of the rise of fascism in 1960s London and one young woman who risked everything to fight it.
Netflix has given a series order to Agent King, an adult animated comedy series. Co-created by Priscilla Presley and John Eddie, Agent King's version of Elvis Presley sees the singer trading in his white jumpsuit for a jet pack when he is covertly inducted into a secret government spy program to help battle the dark forces that threaten the country he loves—all while holding down his day job as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Slate's Studio 360 with host Kurt Andersen toured Edgar Allan Poe’s Baltimore With Laura Lippman, who explained her fascination with Poe and why Baltimore is a "good noir town."
On the latest episode of The Cracked podcast, Alex Schmidt was joined by writer, investigator, and podcast co-host Billy Jensen to talk about how one true crime writer started solving murders.
KPPS Midday Edition welcomed T. Jefferson Parker to talk about his new thriller, which is a timely tale of terrorist plots and white supremacy.
On the latest Writers Detective Bureau podcast, host and veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson took on the topics of "U.S. Marshals, the CIA, and Being Taken Downtown."
It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club welcomed author Hank Phillippi Ryan to discuss her latest standalone thriller, The Murder List.
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