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
In a competitive situation, Paramount Players has won the adaptation rights to the new novel from bestselling author S.A. Cosby. Titled Razorblade Tears, the book is set for release this July and is described as a Southern noir about two men who team up to seek vengeance for their murdered sons in the face of intolerance and prejudice in the rural South, finding redemption along the way. Jerry Bruckheimer and Chad Oman are producing the feature, which has yet to attach a director.
Netflix has prevailed in a competitive auction for worldwide rights on Heart of Stone, the espionage thriller developed by Skydance Media with Gal Gadot starring. Tom Harper, who helmed The Aeronauts and Wild Rose, will direct the film that aspires to hatch a female-centric franchise with the action and global scale of film series like Mission: Impossible and James Bond. The script is by Greg Rucka (The Old Guard) and Allison Schroeder, the latter of whom was Oscar-nominated for Hidden Figures.
British rapper, Bugzy Malone, has joined Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, and Cary Elwes in Guy Ritchie’s untitled thriller movie currently filming in Qatar. The story centers on the MI6 "guns-and-steel agent," Orson Fortune (Statham), who is recruited by a global intelligence agency to track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology that threatens to disrupt the world order. Reluctantly paired with CIA high-tech expert, Sarah Fidel, Fortune sets off on a globe-trotting mission where he will have to use his charm, ingenuity and stealth to track down and infiltrate the network of billionaire arms broker, Greg Simmonds. Ritchie will direct and produce from a screenplay written by Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies.
Warner Bros is moving The Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark, from March 12 to September 24. Alan Taylor directs from a script by Sopranos creator David Chase, with James Gandolfini’s son, Michael Gandolfini, playing the younger version of Tony Soprano, the role his father played.
James Bond is also on the move again. No Time to Die appears set to switch from its Easter weekend release of April 2 to some time in the fall, as the world waits for the pandemic to come under control. The film was originally slated for a fall 2019 release but has been moved several times since.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
This Is Us star, Justin Hartley, has teamed with the series’ director/executive producer, Ken Olin, to option the rights to Jeffery Deaver’s 2019 thriller novel, The Never Game. The story follows Colter Shaw (Hartley), who travels the country in his old-school RV to help police and private citizens solve crimes and locate missing persons, until his latest case finds him caught in a cat-and-mouse game, risking his own life to save the victims. Hartley’s Shaw is a reward seeker raised by survivalists off the grid and taught the rules of survival, or "The Never Game," as their father called it before he was murdered.
Netflix has given a series order to The Lincoln Lawyer, a drama based on Michael Connelly’s series of bestselling novels, from Big Little Lies and Big Sky creator, David E. Kelley and A+E Studios. This is a new incarnation of the project, which originally was set up at CBS with a series production commitment last season. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Magnificent Seven) has been tapped to play the titular character in the Netflix series as it honors the story’s Hispanic origins. The 10-episode first season is based on the second book in The Lincoln Lawyer series, The Brass Verdict.
ABC is moving forward with Sam Esmail’s procedural drama, Acts of Crime, handing the project a pilot pick-up. The network didn’t offer much detail of the project, which is described as a "unique spin" on the crime procedural.
Dawnn Lewis and Jude Elizabeth Mayer are set as series regulars opposite Tate Donovan and Melissa Leo in the Fox drama pilot, Blood Relative, in recastings. The forensic genealogy-themed crime drama is based on James Renner’s 2018 article "Beyond the Jungle of Bad: The True Story of Two Women from California Who Are Solving All the Mysteries." The article featured Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick and Dr. Margaret Press, who combined their genealogy expertise to push the boundaries of forensic science and help law enforcement identify Joe and Jane Does and track down serial killers.
Slumdog Millionaire star, Freida Pinto, is set to star in and executive produce Spy Princess, a limited series based on Shrabani Basu’s book, Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan. Noor was the first female wireless operator sent into occupied France in 1943 – a role with a life expectancy of just six weeks. She was the most unlikely heroine of World War II, a Sufi mystic who won’t use a gun and the daughter of a long-haired Indian Guru who preaches love and peace.
FX has opted not to move forward with Redeemer, a drama series that was to have reunited True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto and one of the series’ original stars, Matthew McConaughey. The project had landed a script-to-series commitment at the network in January but was axed after McConaughey decided to exit the project. Created by Pizzolatto and inspired by Patrick Coleman’s debut novel, The Churchgoer, Redeemer was to star McConaughey as a minister-turned-dissolute security guard whose search for a missing woman in Texas leads him through a corruption-steeped criminal conspiracy.
Demetrius "Lil Meech" Flenory Jr. and Da’Vinchi are set to star in Starz’s drama series, Black Mafia Family, from executive producer, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. Black Mafia Family is inspired by the true story of two brothers who rose from the decaying streets of southwest Detroit in the late 1980’s and created one of the most influential crime families in this country.
Showtime has set the cast of the upcoming Dexter revival. Julia Jones, Alano Miller, Johnny Sequoyah, and Jack Alcott have joined Michael C. Hall and Clancy Brown in the 10-episode limited series, which begins production next month in Massachusetts. The original series, which ran from 2008-13 and remains one of Showtime’s signature dramas, followed Dexter Morgan (Hall), a complicated and conflicted blood-spatter expert for the Miami Police Department who moonlighted as a serial killer.
CBS has dropped the trailer for Clarice, its Silence of the Lambs sequel series. The drama picks up with Clarice Starling (played by Rebecca Breeds) one year after the events of the 1991 film, in which the FBI agent-in-training (then played by Jodie Foster) seeks the assistance of cannibalistic serial killer, Hannibal Lecter, to catch another killer. As the trailer shows, things only get worse for Agent Starling as she returns to the field.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the first chapter of Dead to the Last Drop by Tonya Kappes, read by actor Ariel Linn.
Read or Dead looked ahead to the "Most Anticipated Releases of 2021."
Suspense Radio welcomed bestselling author, Brad Taylor, to talk about his latest book, American Traitor, book fifteen in the Logan Pike series.
Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Edwin Hill, the Edgar- and Agatha-award nominated author of Little Comfort, The Missing Ones, and Watch Her.
Wrong Place, Write Crime featured Alan Orloff talking about his books, including his new release, I Know Where You Sleep. Host Frank Zafiro also celebrated reaching the 100-episode milestone with some reminiscing and messages from past guests, including updates on what they're been doing since appearing on the show.
The Crime Writers of Color podcast interviewed David Heska Wanbli Weiden, author of Winter Counts, nominated for Best Debut Novel and Best Mystery & Thriller in the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards, and also nominated for Book of the Year by the Book of the Month Club.
Writers Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson. talked about how detectives find peoples’ addresses; detective caseloads and what happens during a murder investigation; and the differing responsibilities a detective may have based on duty assignments.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured a "What we are reading" show, talking about books by Rosemary Simpson, Louise Penny, Mary Burton, Anna Lee Huber, and Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child.
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