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
Jeremy Walters and Tommy Reid, the writer and producer behind the true-life mobster drama, Kill the Irishman, are partnering again for the independent feature, Bitter Sweet. The film follows an unassuming ex-cop who is mistaken for an infamous mob hitman and becomes entangled in a mystery in order to hunt the men who brutally murdered his wife. Walters will direct off a screenplay he wrote, with casting still underway.
Vertical Entertainment and Noriva are teaming for the US distribution of the FBI spy thriller, The Informer, starring Joel Kinnaman. The feature will be available November 6 via Comcast, ATT, DIRECTV, Dish, Spectrum, Verizon, Frontier, Amazon, FandangoNow, Vudu, Microsoft, Sony, and Redbox On Demand. Italian actor-turned-filmmaker Andrea Di Stefano directed and co-wrote with Matt Cook and Rowan Joffé. The project follows Pete Koslow (Kinnaman), who is a former special operations soldier working as an informant for the FBI to help dismantle the Polish mafia’s drug trade in New York. But when the FBI’s operation goes wrong, resulting in the death of an undercover NYPD cop, Pete is coerced into returning to the prison where he previously served time for manslaughter in order to take down the cartel from the inside.
Netflix has landed Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and Jurnee Smollett to star in Spiderhead, the Joseph Kosinski-directed adaptation of the George Saunders short story. Spiderhead is set in the near future, when convicts are offered the chance to volunteer as medical subjects in hopes of shortening their sentences. The focus is on two prisoners who become the test patients for emotion-altering drugs that force the prisoners to grapple with their pasts in a facility run by a brilliant visionary who supervises the program.
Netflix also acquired the thriller, I Care a Lot, from the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie stars Rosamund Pike as Marla, who sets herself up as the legal guardian of elderly people in order to take advantage of them. But she makes a big mistake when she takes on the wrong elderly client. Eiza González, Peter Dinklage, Chris Messina, and Dianne Wiest also star in the film written and directed by J Blakeson.
Apple Original Films has acquired the rights to Cherry, a heist film directed by Avengers filmmakers, Joe and Anthony Russo, to be released in 2021. The project stars Tom Holland and Ciara Bravo and is based on a novel by Nico Walker that tells the story of a former Army medic who returned from Iraq with extreme undiagnosed PTSD, fell into opioid addiction, and began robbing banks.
Open Road Films’s action-thriller, Honest Thief, starring Liam Neeson, is set to go wide on October 16 at 2,000 theaters, which is a week later and in a lot more theaters than originally planned. The movie is from Ozark co-creator and producer Mark Williams and stars Neeson as a bank robber who tries to turn himself in after falling for a woman (Kate Walsh) who works at the storage facility where he’s stashed his money. Complications ensue when his case is turned over to a corrupt FBI agent (Jai Courtney) and he must go underground to save both himself and the woman he loves.
Screen Media has acquired U.S. rights to the thriller, Girl, written and directed by Chad Foust and starring Bella Thorne and Mickey Rourke. The deal came ahead of the film’s U.S. premiere later this week at Fantastic Fest, with a November release date in the works. Thorne plays a woman (she’s only known as Girl) who returns to her small hometown to exact revenge on her abusive father, only to discover someone murdered him the day before. As she searches for answers, she soon finds herself prey to a sinister sheriff (Rourke) and uncovers a disturbing family legacy more disturbing than she’d imagined.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
HBO Max is developing a television drama inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 classic, Rashomon. The project has been in the works for about two years after the television arm of Steven Spielberg’s company announced that it had secured the rights to create a new series inspired by the film. The series will not be an adaptation but will retain the key plot device of the Kurosawa film – a drama centering on a grisly sexual assault and murder and the unraveling mystery seen through multiple characters’ competing narratives.
Peacock has acquired the David E. Kelley crime-thriller drama series, Mr. Mercedes, which is based on Stephen King’s bestselling Bill Hodges trilogy. The first two seasons will premiere exclusively on the NBCUniversal streaming service on Thursday, October 15, with a premiere date for Season 3 TBD. The fate of the series, which previously aired on AT&T Audience Network, had been in limbo since Audience announced in the spring that it was ceasing operations. Mr. Mercedes follows a retired detective who is tormented by a serial killer through a series of letters and e-mails, causing him to set out on a dangerous and potentially felonious crusade to protect his loved ones and himself.
ABC released a teaser trailer for Big Sky based on The Highway, the first book in C.J. Box's Cassie Dewell novel series. In the straight-to-series drama, written and executive produced by David E. Kelley, private detective Cassie Dewell (Kylie Bunbury) partners 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.
Nicole Ari Parker (Empire) is joining NBC’s Chicago P.D. for a major recurring role on the upcoming eighth season of the Dick Wolf drama series. She will play Deputy Superintendent Samatha Miller, an ardent proponent of police reform who will not tolerate breaches of the new police guidelines and protocols. She will be tasked with reining in Detective Sergeant Hank Voight, who's known for his violent methods with criminals.
Aggi O'Casey and Tom Varey are set to star in the new BBC thriller, Ridley Road, based on the novel by Jo Bloom. The project follows a young Jewish woman who joins her boyfriend in fighting against neo-Nazism in post-war Britain and infiltrates a neo-Nazi group, a move that ends up challenging her courage and loyalties.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
On September 30 at 6pm, Authors on the Air will present author and former cop, Bruce Robert Coffin, live in conversation with New York Times bestselling author, Craig Johnson. Johnson is best known for his Walt Longmire mystery series, which is the basis for the hit Netflix drama.
The new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast featured the first chapter of the mystery novel, Revenge On Route 66, by Kris Neri as read by actor Jasmine Swalef.
The Two Crime Writers and a Microphone podcast was joined by Stuart Neville, who discussed his new collection of short stories, The Traveller, as well as pancake recipes, nice tools, and class issues.
Rachel Howzell was the special guest on Speaking of Mysteries, discussing her latest thriller, And Now She's Gone.
Suspense Magazine's Beyond the Cover chatted with Shannon Kirk, whose dark novel, Method 15/33, was released to critical acclaim. Shannon is back with the sequel to that book, Viebury Grove.
The latest Criminal Mischief discussed author Gayle Lynds's “10 Rules For Writing A Best-selling Thriller.”
The latest episode of Wrong Place, Write Crime, welcomed author Lee Matthew Goldberg to talk about his new book, The Ancestor.
Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, talked about returning to old crime scenes, how police can track the cellphone of a missing person, investigating a child death, and reform.
Brad Parks stopped by It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club to discuss his latest novel, Interference, a mystery set in the world of quantum physics.
The latest guest on The Gay Mystery Podcast was Garrick Jones, a former opera singer turned author of The Cricketer's Arms: A Clyde Smith Mystery and more.
The featured guest on the latest Tartan Noir Show was Ann Cleeves, author of more than 30 novels and creator of the series characters Jimmy Perez (played by Douglas Henshall in the hit TV show, Shetland) and Vera Stanhope (played by Brenda Blethyn in TV’s Vera). Ann also chatted about her support for libraries, her love for Shetland and Fair Isle - even without amenities - and why, when she starts to write a novel, she never knows what will happen at the end.
Nikki Dolson, author of Love and Other Criminal Behavior, was interviewed by Robert Justice on the Crime Writers of Color podcast. Dolson is a writer primarily of short fiction, which has been published in places like Shotgun Honey, Tough, Thuglit, and Bartleby Snopes. She’s also written the quasi-novel, All Things Violent, in addition to her short story collection, Love, and Other Criminal Behavior.
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