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
The Academy Award nominations were announced this morning and include a few crime dramas. Among the Best Movie nods are Judas and the Black Messiah, Promising Young Woman, and The Trial of the Chicago 7. In the Best Actress category, Andra Day was nominated for The United States vs. Billie Holiday, and Carey Mulligan for Promising Young Woman. In the Best Supporting Actor category, Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield were nominated for Judas and the Black Messiah and Sacha Baron Cohen for The Trial of the Chicago 7. For all the nominees in the various categories, follow this link.
Likewise, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced the nominees for the annual BAFTA awards, which also include nods for several crime dramas. The Best Film category includes The Mauritanian, Promising Young Woman, and The Trial of the Chicago 7. The Best British Film category includes the Irish crime drama, Calm With Horses as well as The Mauritanian and Promising Young Woman. For all the nominees, follow this link.
New Line has picked up the action-thriller, Classified, with Chad Stahelski (John Wick) attached to direct, and Andrew Deutschman and Jason Pagan set to pen the screenplay. The log line for Classified describes the project as a "high octane, cat-and-mouse thriller, in the vein of Die Hard meets Indiana Jones, set inside a top secret government bunker that contains relics covertly recovered during World War II — that turn out to be more powerful and dangerous than ever imagined."
Elizabeth Banks, who most recently directed the latest Charlie’s Angels installment, has signed on to direct Cocaine Bear for Universal Pictures. Written by Jimmy Warden, the film is a thriller inspired by true events that took place in Kentucky in 1985 when a bear's death from ingesting cocaine led to a corrupt narcotics officer and drug smuggling ring.
Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss, Cary Elwes, and Greg Tarzan Davis have rounded out the cast of Mission: Impossible 7 starring Tom Cruise. They join previously announced new cast members Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff and Esai Morales, as well as returning actors, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Vanessa Kirby. The most recent installment ramped up production late last year after its filming was put on pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The plan was to shoot installments seven and eight back-to-back, but Deadline recently reported production on the eighth film will occur in 2022 in order to give cast and crew a break.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Apple TV+ has given a straight-to-series order for a new limited series from director Alma Har’el (Honey Boy) starring Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o. The project, titled Lady in the Lake, is an adaptation of the 2019 novel of the same name by Laura Lippman. Set in 1960s Baltimore, the series centers on Maddie Schwartz (Portman), a housewife and mother who is pushed by an unsolved murder to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist. The case sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood (Nyong’o), a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs, and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda.
Peacock has given a series order for Dan Brown’s Langdon (f/k/a Langdon), based on Brown’s best-selling thriller novel, The Lost Symbol. The series was originally developed by NBC and ordered to pilot by the network last year. Written by Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie, Dan Brown’s Langdon follows the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Ashley Zukerman), who must solve a series of deadly puzzles to save his kidnapped mentor and thwart a chilling global conspiracy.
Patrick Harbinson (Homeland) is adapting author Kate London’s novel, Post Mortem, into a three-part ITV series. The drama will be titled The Tower, in a nod to the novel’s thrilling opening sequence in which a veteran beat cop and teenage girl fall to their deaths from a tower block in south-east London, leaving a five-year-old boy and rookie police officer Lizzie Griffiths on the roof — only for them to go missing. Detective Sergeant Sarah Collins works to solve the disappearances and uncover the truth behind the grisly tower block deaths. Collins and Griffiths later become the central characters in three books written by Kate London, a former Met officer.
Dakota Fanning is joining Ripley, starring opposite Andrew Scott. She'll play Marge Sherwood, an American living in Italy who suspects darker motives underlie the affability of Tom Ripley (Scott). Based on Patricia Highsmith’s books, the series follows Tom Ripley, a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, who is hired by a wealthy man to try to convince his vagabond son, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), who is living a comfortable, trust-funded ex-pat life in Italy, to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud, and murder.
Claire Foy and Paul Bettany are set as the stars of Amazon and BBC One’s A Very British Scandal, a follow-up to the Hugh Grant-led, A Very English Scandal. The three-part series focuses on the divorce of the Duke (Bettany) and Duchess of Argyll (Foy), one of the most notorious, extraordinary, and brutal legal cases of the 20th Century that included accusations of forgery, theft, violence, drug-taking, secret recording, bribery, and an explicit Polaroid picture.
Queen Latifah is going to hunt more bad guys following the news that CBS has renewed The Equalizer for a second season after only four episodes. The Equalizer stars Latifah as Robyn McCall, an enigmatic woman with a mysterious background who uses her extensive skills as a former CIA operative to help those with nowhere else to turn.
More good nenewal news, this time for the British crime drama series, Bloodlands, which stars James Nesbitt and comes from Bodyguard creator Jed Mercurio. The BBC announced it was renewing that series for a second season. The noir-ish drama follows DCI Tom Brannick (Nesbitt), a veteran detective who delves into his own dark past to try and solve an infamous cold case with enormous personal significance: a series of mysterious disappearances linked to a turbulent period in Northern Ireland history over 20 years ago.
Queen of the South fans aren't as lucky, since USA announced the show will end with its upcoming fifth season. The Alice Braga-led crime drama (an adaptation of the best-selling novel La Reina Del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte) tells the story of Teresa Mendoza, a woman who is forced to run from the Mexican cartel and seek refuge in America. Eventually, she rises to power over her own drug trafficking empire.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast episode is up, a special bonus episode that features an excerpt from the audio book of Death in Rancho Las Amigas by Gay Toltl Kinman, as read by actor and mystery author, Harley Jane Kozak.
Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer, Laurie Buchanan, on the Crime Cafe podcast. Buchanan's debut novel, Indelible, introduces Sean McPherson, an ex-cop turned handyman at a writer's retreat where the story takes place.
Read or Dead hosts, Katie and Nusrah, chatted about mystery/thrillers that feature revenge and serial killers, and how these narratives uncover stories that often go unheard.
Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Jess Montgomery, whose protagonist, Sheriff Lily Ross, returns in The Stills, the third installment of Montgomery’s series that takes place in 1920s Prohibition-era southeastern Ohio.
Wendy Heard was the latest guest on the Queer Writers of Crime podcast. Heard is the author of two adult thrillers, The Kill Club and Hunting Annabelle, which Kirkus Reviews praised as "a diabolically plotted creep show."
Suspense Radio bought back bestselling author, Joel Rosenberg, to talk about his latest book in the Marcus Ryker series, The Beirut Protocol.
Wrong Place, Write Crime spoke with Ryan Sayles about his latest police procedural, It's Ugly Because It's Personal.
The internationally bestselling Anne Perry stopped by It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club. Perry is the author of two long-running series, one with Victorian policeman Thomas Pitt and his well-born wife Charlotte and another featuring private detective William Monk and volatile nurse Hester Latterly. The New York Times selected Perry as one of the "100 Masters of Crime."
The latest In GAD We Trust episode examined the Dr. Thorndyke Stories of R. Austin Freeman.
Listening to the Dead host, Lynda Plante, tackled the topic, "Cause of Death – Gunshot Wound" in the latest episode. She was joined by former Senior Forensic Scientist, David Pryor, an internationally-renowned expert in the field of firearms and wound ballistics.
On the new podcast, Crime Time FM, Tony Parsons interviewed Paul Burke about his new novel, Your Neighbour's Wife. Parsons also discussed his love of the iconic thriller/chiller, Rebecca; tackled topics as diverse as the death of print journalism, David Bowie on drugs, and gambling the pension on becoming a crime writer; and took a look at "why Lee Child bosses it."
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