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
Paramount Pictures has acquired Brilliance, and will turn the Marcus Sakey novel adaptation into a vehicle for Will Smith to star and Akiva Goldsman to write. The story is set in a future where non-neurotypical people ("Brilliants") are demonized by society who fear they will threaten the status quo of the "normal" population with their unique gifts. Smith will play the book series hero, Nick Cooper, a federal agent who works for the Department of Analysis and Response and whose job it is to track down and terminate criminal abnorms who use their gifts for ill.
New Line Cinema has won an auction for Shut In, a spec script by first-time scribe Melanie Toast. The story is an edgy thriller centered on a single mother who is held captive by her violent ex, leaving her two young children at risk - and she must do everything to protect them and survive.
Saban Films has taken U.S. rights to the Aaron Eckhart action thriller, Line of Duty, from director Steven C. Miller. The pic follows Eckhart as a disgraced cop who finds himself in a race against time to find a kidnap victim whose abductor he accidentally killed. The film will be receiving a November theatrical release.
Vikings star, Katheryn Winnick, and Narcos star, Juan Pablo Raba, have joined the cast of The Minuteman, the action thriller starring Liam Neeson that begins production next week in New Mexico and Ohio. The project follows a rancher (Neeson) on the Arizona border who becomes the unlikely defender of a young Mexican boy desperately fleeing the cartel assassins (led by Raba) who’ve pursued him into the U.S.
Marvel veteran Hayley Atwell as been cast alongside Tom Cruise in the new Mission: Impossible movie, the seventh in the franchise and the first of two being directed back-to-back by Christopher McQuarrie. However, there is no word yet on the role that Atwell will play.
An upcoming Matt Damon thriller has been given a 2020 awards season release date with a limited release on November 6, 2020, before going wide on November 13. The untitled film follows Damon as Bill, an "oil-rig roughneck," who leaves his familiar Oklahoman environs to be with his daughter, who has been studying in France but was recently imprisoned for a murder she claims she didn't commit. In addition to Damon, the film also stars Abigail Breslin and Camille Cottin.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Fox has put in development The Perfect Couple, a one-hour mystery drama based on Elin Hilderbrand’s bestselling novel. The story centers around wedding season on Nantucket, where one lavish wedding ends in disaster before it can even begin when a body is discovered hours before the ceremony. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash digs into the backgrounds of the bride, the groom, the groom’s famous mystery novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, Kapenash discovers every wedding is a minefield – and no couple is perfect.
Monk creator and executive producer, Andy Breckman, has re-teamed with the series’ director, Randy Zisk, for another hour-long procedural that CBS has put in development. Titled Einstein (and based on the German series), the action follows the brilliant but directionless great-grandson of Albert Einstein, who spends his days as a comfortably tenured professor. That is, until his bad boy antics land him in trouble with the law, and he's pressed into service helping a local police detective solve her most puzzling cases.
Black Ops producer World Media Rights is developing a true crime series with the real-life inspiration for Amazon’s Bosch after securing access to two Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Cold Case Unit veterans. The ten-part documentary series, Catching the Cold Killers, will follow officers Rick Jackson and Adam Bercovici as they re-open cold cases from LA’s law enforcement community. Jackson, who is a founding member of the LAPD cold case unit, was the inspiration for Michael Connelly’s fictional character, Harry Bosch, which was adapted into the eponymous Amazon cop drama.
Hulu has opted not to proceed with an ambitious two-series drama project based on two of John Grisham’s novels, 1995's The Rainmaker and 2015's Rogue Lawyer. Deadline reported that there is interest from other potential buyers in the project, which had been envisioned as the first chapter in a larger franchise, tentatively titled The Grisham Universe.
Oscar-winning actor Christoph Waltz is set to co-star opposite Liam Hemsworth in the untitled action thriller from Scorpion creator Nick Santora, producer Gordon Gray, Silver Reel Pictures, and CBS Television Studios. In the series, desperate to take care of his pregnant wife before a terminal illness can take his life, Dodge Maynard (Hemsworth) accepts an offer to participate in a deadly game where he soon discovers that he’s not the hunter…but the prey. The action-thriller explores the limits of how far someone would go to fight for their life and their family
Glynn Turman (Mr. Mercedes) is set for a recurring role opposite Chris Rock on the upcoming fourth season of FX’s Fargo, which will be set in Kansas City in 1950. The city will serve as the crossroads and collision point of two migrations, Italians coming from Italy and African Americans fleeing the south to escape Jim Crow, both fighting for a piece of the American dream as two controlling crime syndicates. Rock plays the head of one family, while Turman will recur as Doctor Senator.
Amazon has set the return date for John Krasinski’s Jack Ryan. The series, based on the CIA officer from Tom Clancy’s books, will premiere its second season on Nov. 1. Amazon also released the full-length trailer for the upcoming season,
The first trailer for Netflix's new procedural drama, Criminal, is out, with David Tennant and Hayley Atwell starring as uncooperative suspects in the "innovative" police procedural anthology series. Set entirely in the confines of a police interview suite, the show features 12 distinct stories that take place in four countries: the UK, France, Germany, and Spain.
Facebook Watch has dropped the first trailer for Limetown, its adaptation of the hit podcast starring and exec produced by Jessica Biel. Limetown follows Lia Haddock, played by Biel, a journalist for American Public Radio, as she unravels the mystery behind the disappearance of over 300 people at a neuroscience research community in Tennessee.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Crime author Walter Mosley spoke with WBUR in Boston about his new reference work, Elements of Fiction.
Speaking of Mysteries welcomed author Sherri Leigh James to discuss her series featuring interior decorator Cissy Huntington, the protagonist in Blood Red and Iced Blue.
The Writer's Detective Bureau, a podcast hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, discussed "Exigent Circumstances, Becoming a PI, and Confidential Informants."
It Was a Dark and Stormy Bookclub chatted with Ann Aguirre, an American author of speculative fiction, about her new crime novel, The Third Mrs. Durst.
THEATER
The Vertigo Theatre Mystery Series in Calgary, Canada, will present Strangers on a Train, September 15 - October 13, 2019. The thriller play, by Craig Warner that's based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, was made famous by the classic Alfred Hitchcock film.
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