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
Compelling Pictures has closed a deal to produce a feature adaptation of Michael Connelly’s recent bestseller, Fair Warning, which is being seen as a potential franchise. Connelly will write the screen adaptation and serve as co-producer. Fair Warning is the third in Connelly’s series of books about investigative journalist Jack McEvoy and is set around the rapidly evolving "wild west" world of DNA sequence data harvesting—specifically in regard to such data being sold for profit within an industry that has no oversight.
Amazon Studios is set to produce All the Old Knives, starring Chris Pine and Thandie Newton. Based on the acclaimed novel of the same title by Olen Steinhauer, who also adapted the screenplay, the studio has tapped Janus Metz to direct the spy thriller. The story is set in the town of Carmel-by-the-Sea and follows ex-lovers Henry Pelham and Celia Harrison—he a CIA spy, she an ex-spy—who meet over dinner to reminisce about their time together. The conversation moves inevitably to the disastrous hijacking of Royal Jordanian Flight 127, which ended in the deaths of all on board. That failure haunts the CIA to this day, and Henry has come to Carmel to close the book on that seedy chapter. As they parry and flirt over California cuisine, it becomes clear that one of them is not going to survive the meal.
Break, one of Rutger Hauer’s final movies, will be getting a multiplatform release on January 5, 2021, via Conduit Presents. The Michael Elkin-directed crime sports drama follows a young inner city kid who is wasting his talents on petty crime. He has the ability to become a world-champion snooker player, if only he can overcome his circumstances, his ties to the mob, and himself.
Andrew Koji has joined the cast of Brad Pitt’s Bullet Train action movie at Sony Pictures. David Leitch is set to direct the project, which is based on the Japanese novel, Maria Beetle, by Kotaro Isaka. Although plot details are being kept under wraps, the project is described as a contained thriller in the vein of Speed and centers on a group of assassins, with Koji playing one of the assassins along with Pitt.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Stephen Graham (The Irishman) and Sean Bean (Game of Thrones) are set to star in the BBC prison drama, Time, from Cracker creator Jimmy McGovern. The project is described as a high-stakes portrayal of life in the modern British penal system, seen through the eyes of two very different men. Bean plays Mark Hebden, a teacher, husband and father, who killed an innocent man in an accident, and consumed by guilt, accepts and even welcomes his four-year sentence. Separated from his family, he has no idea what to expect in this unforgiving new environment and needs to learn quickly how to survive. Graham plays Eric Reid, a prison officer. Caring and honest, Eric tries his very best to protect those in his charge, something which is a daily challenge in this understaffed and high-tension world. When one of the most dangerous inmates identifies Eric's weakness, Eric faces an impossible choice between his principles and his love for his family.
Filming has started ITV's drama series, Grace, an adaptation of Peter James's novels starring John Simm as tenacious detective Roy Grace. Screenwriter and Endeavour creator Russell Lewis has adapted two of the Pan Mac-published Brighton-based thrillers, Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead, into two-hour screenplays. The cast also features Richie Campbell, who takes the role of DS Glenn Branson, and Rakie Ayola as ACC Vosper.
Happy Face is the latest podcast series to be adapted for television. CBS All Access is developing the adaptation with Your Honor writer Jennifer Cacicio and The Good Fight creators Robert and Michelle King. The podcast, produced by iHeart Media, tells the story of Melissa Moore, who at age 15 discovered that her father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, was a serial murderer, known as the Happy Face Killer because he drew smiley faces on his letters to the media and prosecutors. As an adult, Moore has changed her name, guarded her secret, and cut off all ties to her father who is currently serving life in prison. But when he contacts her to take credit for more victims, she is pulled into an extraordinary investigation into her father’s crimes, the impact they had on his victims’ families and ultimately into reckoning with her own identity.
Genevieve Padalecki will take on a regularly recurring role opposite her husband, Jared Padelecki, on his new CW series, Walker, a reimagining of CBS’s long-running 1990s action/crime series Walker, Texas Ranger. The series centers on Cordell Walker (Jared Padalecki), a widower and father of two with his own moral code, who returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years only to discover there’s harder work to be done at home. Genevieve Padalecki will play Emily, Walker’s strong, capable, and generous late wife who is brave and focused on helping the disenfranchised. Appearing in flashback, Emily is a grounded and authentic hero in the Walker family.
Although Stumptown was picked up for a second season in May, ABC has ultimately decided to cancel the series after one season due to COVID-related circumstances. Based on the graphic novel series of the same name, Stumptown starred Cobie Smulders as P.I. Dex Parios, a "strong, assertive, and sharp-witted army veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt, and a brother to take care of in Portland, Oregon." Jake Johnson, Tantoo Cardinal, Cole Sibus, Adrian Martinez, Camryn Manheim and Michael Ealy also starred.
ABC has given a straight-to-series order to the Erin Brockovich-inspired drama, Rebel, starring Katey Sagal. Inspired by the present-day life of Erin Brockovich, Sagal will star as Annie "Rebel" Bello, a blue-collar legal advocate without a law degree who is funny, brilliant, and fearless, caring desperately about the causes she fights for and the people she loves. The drama is written by Krista Vernoff, showrunner for Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19, and is set to debut in 2021 under the direction of Tara Nicole Weyr.
Channel 4 has ordered an adaptation of the Swedish crime thriller, Before We Die. Lesley Sharp leads the cast in the Bristol-set series, playing detective Hannah Laing who becomes deeply conflicted when she discovers her son is playing a crucial role as an undercover informant in a brutal murder investigation. Patrick Gibson plays her mixed-up son, Christian, while Croatian actor Toni Gojanović, who starred in HBO Europe’s Success, will take on the role of Davor Mimica, the leader of the criminal gang. Vincent Regan stars as Billy Murdoch, a non-conformist investigator, who is seconded to Hannah’s unit to advise on Eastern European drug gangs.
CBS Studios is adapting Ragnar Jónasson’s best-selling Nordic noir book, The Darkness. Andrea Janakas, who wrote the Amanda Seyfried-starring short film, Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves, is attached to write the eight-part series set in Reykjavik, Iceland. It follows Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir, who is given—two weeks before retirement—the cold case of a young Russian woman whose body washes up on an Icelandic shore. Hulda discovers that another young woman vanished at the same time, and that no one is telling her the whole story. Even her colleagues in the police seem determined to put the brakes on her investigation.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
Two Crime Writers and a Microphone welcomed author Lisa Hall to talk about her psychological thrillers, trashy TV, the wonders of the show Naked Attraction, her journey to becoming a writer, and much more.
Crime Cafe host, Debbi Mack, chatted with crime writer and artist Jessie Chandler.
Writer Types host, Eric Beetner, was joined by Nancy Stohlman to talk about flash fiction and her new book, Going Short; plus authors Beau Johnson and Ryan Sayles also stopped by.
Meet the Thriller Author spoke with Joshua Hood, author of The Treadstone Resurrection and Search and Destroy Series.
Walter Mosley was the special guest on Wrong Place, Write Crime, discussing Easy Rawlins, Leonid McGill, race relations in America, science fiction, the Bill Clinton boost, and Mosley's collection of short stories, The Awkward Black Man.
My Favorite Detective Stories welcomed Julian Sher, an award-winning investigative journalist in TV, print, radio, and on the Web, who also co-authored two books on outlaw motorcycle gangs.
The Gay Mystery Podcast spoke with Christopher Rice (the son of author Anne Rice), whose two novels of dark supernatural suspense, The Heavens Rise and The Vines, were both finalists for the Bram Stoker Award.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club shared their current favorite crime reads.
The Tartan Noir Show returned with a look at the Bloody Scotland conference, which went online this year with panels and interviews featuring special guests Jeffrey Deaver, Attica Locke, Peter May, Ann Cleves, Jo Nesbø, Ian Ranklin, Robert Crais, Lee Child, and more.
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