It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:
THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES
Spyglass Media Group has teamed with Atomic Monster’s James Wan and Michael Clear to develop a film based on the 1980s classic action series Knight Rider. TJ Fixman, a former video game writer, is adapting the screenplay. Created by Glen A. Larson, Knight Rider first aired on NBC from 1982-1986 and featured a high-tech car named KITT that assisted the mysterious crime-fighting driver Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff). The series amassed a significant cult following and inspired TV spinoffs, films, video games, books, and a Knight Rider convention known as KnightCon. Plot details for this latest installment are being kept under wraps, although it is said to be a present-day take that will maintain the anti-establishment tone of the original.
Lionsgate studios confirmed that a fifth John Wick movie is in the works and announced that both John Wick 4 and John Wick 5 will be filmed back-to-back. The fourth installment was originally scheduled for release in May of 2021 but is now slated to hit theatres Memorial Day weekend 2022. A release date for John Wick 5 was not announced. John Wick has become a big action franchise for Lionsgate, with the Starz John Wick TV series, The Continental, looking to premiere sometime following the fourth movie.
Chad Stahelski is set to produce New Line’s remake of the 2010 South Korean film, The Man From Nowhere, with Derek Kolstad penning the script. Stahelski previously directed all three John Wick films with Kolstad serving as writer. The Man From Nowhere was the highest grossing film in South Korea during its year of release making $42M and centered around a quiet pawnshop keeper with a violent past who takes on a drug-and-organ trafficking ring in hope of saving the child who is his only friend.
The Kissing Booth’s Joey King is in negotiations to star opposite Brad Pitt in the action-thriller, Bullet Train, for Sony Pictures. Hobbs & Shaw director David Leitch will direct and also supervise the script, which will be written by Zak Olkewicz. The film is based on the Japanese novel, Maria Beetle, by best-selling author Kotaro Isaka (which Harvill Secker has separately announced it will publish in English next year). In the novel, five assassins find themselves on a fast-moving bullet train from Tokyo to Morioka with only a few stops in between and discover their missions may be related. The question becomes, who will make it off the train alive and what awaits them at the terminal station?
STXfilms has won the U.S. rights to director Kevin Macdonald’s untitled legal thriller (formerly known as Prisoner 760). The project stars Jodie Foster, Tahar Rahim, Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Zachary Levi and tells the story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Rahim), who is captured by the U.S. government and languishes in prison for years without charge or trial. Losing all hope, Slahi finds allies in defense attorney Nancy Hollander (Foster) and her associate Teri Duncan (Woodley). Their controversial advocacy, along with evidence uncovered by formidable military prosecutor, Lt. Stuart Couch (Cumberbatch), eventually reveals a shocking and far reaching conspiracy.
Gravitas Ventures has acquired North American rights to Van Ditthavong’s feature directorial debut, All Roads To Pearla (formerly known as Sleeping In Plastic), which had its world premiere at the 2019 Austin Film Festival. The crime-thriller stars Alex MacNicoll, Addison Timlin, Corin Nemec, Nick Chinlund and Dash Mihok and is described as a dark coming-of-age tale about a high school wrestler in a small Texas town who becomes entangled with a beautiful drifter and her psychopathic lover.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Novelist-turned-TV-writer Megan Abbott is setting up her latest television project after eOne snapped up the rights to her upcoming book, The Turnout. The story is set in the hothouse world of a ballet school led by the Durant sisters, Dara and Marie, and Dara’s husband Charlie. After they hire Derek, a charismatic, possibly shady contractor to renovate the studio, Marie throws herself into an intense affair with him that threatens the family's tight bonds and brings forward family secrets until an act of violence overturns everything.
Apple TV+ has given a straight-to-series order to a crime drama from Robert Downey Jr.’s Team Downey and writer Adam Perlman. The untitled series is based on the Toronto Life article "The Sting" by journalist Michael Lista and follows a frustrated Canadian detective who takes on a decades-old cold case in hopes of winning a confession and becoming a hero. The case quickly spirals out of control when the undercover cop attempts an elaborate sting, adding playacting cops, taxpayer resources, and an unexpected friendship with the peculiar target.
Thomas Jane will star in and executive produce the crime drama, Troppo, a series adaptation of New York Times bestselling author Candice Fox’s Crimson Lake novel. Yolanda Ramke (Netflix’s Cargo) will pen the adaptation. Jane stars as an ex-cop falsely accused of a disturbing crime who escapes to the tropics of Far North Queensland. The series is slated to go into production later this year in Australia.
Landmark Studio Group has partnered with District 33 to develop and produce Shadows in the Vineyard, a limited-run drama series based on journalist Maximillian Potter’s bestselling book, Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison The World’s Greatest Wine, with Noah Wyle and Judith Light attached to star and executive produce. The project is set against the backdrop of the gorgeous, rolling countryside of the Cote-d’Or in Burgundy, France and is based on the true story of the outlandish 2010 plot-by-poison extortion scheme that targeted the most sought-after and expensive wine in the world – the legendary Romanée-Conti.
Michelle Gomez has been cast as a series regular in a recasting of HBO Max’s thriller series, The Flight Attendant, starring and executive produced by Kaley Cuoco. The Flight Attendant is a story of how an entire life can change in one night when flight attendant Cassie (Cuoco) wakes up in the wrong hotel, in the wrong bed, with a dead man – and no idea what happened. Gomez plays Miranda, a hardened, savvy businesswoman with anger-management issues who Cassie meets in Bangkok, and replaces Sonoya Mizuno who was initially cast in the role. Michiel Huisman, Colin Woodell, Zosia Mamet, Merle Dandridge and Griffin Matthews also star.
Valerie Mahaffey (Dead To Me) has been cast in Big Sky, ABC’s straight-to-series drama created and executive produced by David E. Kelley. Based on The Highway, the first book in C.J. Box’s Cassie Dewell series of novels, the story sees private detective Cassie Dewell (Kylie Bunbury) partnering with ex-cop Jenny Hoyt (Katheryn Winnick) on a search for two sisters who have been kidnapped by a truck driver on a remote highway in Montana. When they discover that these are not the only girls who have disappeared in the area, they must race against the clock to stop the killer before another victim is taken.
Amazon Studios has ordered a second season of its hit conspiracy thriller drama series, Hunters, starring Al Pacino, Logan Lerman, and Jerrika Hinton. Created by David Weil and executive produced by Jordan Peele, the first season of Hunters followed a diverse band of Nazi hunters living in 1977 New York City. The Hunters, as they’re known, have discovered that hundreds of high-ranking Nazi officials are living among us and conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the United States.
Hulu’s upcoming drama, No Man’s Land, tells the story of the all-female militia that fought in the Syrian civil war against ISIS. Called the YPJ, or Women’s Protection Units, these courageous women took on the terrorist ISIS soldiers who were terrified of dying by their hand. The series stars Félix Moati, Mélanie Thierry and James Purefoy alongside Souheila Yacoub, Joe Ben Ayed, James Floyd, Dean Ridge, Julia Faure, François Caron and Céline Samie.
Hulu announced new programming including a true-crime series, The Girl From Plainville, starring Elle Fanning. The series is based on the true story of Michelle Carter, who was controversially convicted of involuntary manslaughter of Conrad Roy III in the infamous texting-suicide case. In addition to starring as Carter, Fanning will executive produce alongside co-showrunners Liz Hannah and Patrick Macmanus, as well as Brittany Kahan Ward.
Sundance Now has boarded the New Zealand crime series, One Lane Bridge, in the U.S. and Canada (while sister AMC Networks streamer Acorn TV has taken the rights in the UK and Latin America). One Lane Bridge tells the story of young Maori detective, Ariki Davis (Dominic Ona-Ariki), who investigates the death of local legend, Grub Ryder, after his body is found at the bottom of One Lane Bridge. During his investigation with Detective Senior Sergeant Stephen Tremaine (Joel Tobeck) in Queenstown, Davis taps into his Matakite — a supernatural ability akin to a second sight that he hasn’t experienced since his youth.
Netflix unveiled a first look at Ben Wheatley’s Rebecca, the adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic novel that was previously turned into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940. Armie Hammer and Lily James lead the cast, playing the aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier in Hitchcock’s version) and his new wife (previously Joan Fontaine), with Kristin Scott Thomas as Mrs Danvers.
Showtime has debuted the first clip for Bryan Cranston’s limited legal drama, Your Honor. The ten-part series is executive produced by The Good Fight duo Robert and Michelle King and The Night Of’s Peter Moffat, who also writes. The Breaking Bad star plays a respected judge whose son is involved in a hit-and-run in New Orleans that leads to a high-stakes game of lies, deceit and impossible choices.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the mystery short story "Nova, Capers, and a Schmear of Cream Cheese," written by Debra H. Goldstein and read by actor Thomas Nance.
Via Elizabeth Foxwell's Bunburyist blog, which also brought us another such "story time" last week: The Elmhurst (IL) Public Library is offering a Storytime for Grown-Ups podcast, including shorts by Agatha Christie, Roald Dahl, William Faulkner, B.J. Novak, Edgar Allan Poe, Bill Pronzini, and Ian Rankin.
Debbi Mack interviews crime writer Andrew Allan, author of the Walt Asher thriller series, on the Crime Cafe podcast.
Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Tracy Clark, a native Chicagoan who writes mysteries set in her hometown while working as an editor in the newspaper industry.
On the Spybrary Podcast, Jeff Quest of the Spy Write blog joined Josh Pachter to talk about the mid-eighties digest, Espionage Magazine.
All Things Investigative chatted with J. Todd Scott, a federal agent-turned novelist of the Texas border series.
The Gay Mystery podcast talked about "impossible crimes" with Robert Innes, author of The Blake Harte Mysteries.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club spoke with the "cop doc," Ellen Kirschman, a clinical psychologist and recipient of the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Police and Public Safety Psychology.
The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast featured O'Neil de Noux, 2019 Shamus Award winner for Best Short Story for his tale "Sac-a-Lait Man," from EQMM's September/October 2019 issue.
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