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
David Strathairn will join Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, and Harris Dickinson in the film adaptation of Where The Crawdads Sing, based on Delia Owens’s best-selling novel. Directed by Olivia Newman, the project takes place in the mid-20th century South and centers on Kya, a young woman who is abandoned by her family and has to raise herself all alone in the marshes outside of her small town. However, when her former boyfriend is found dead, Kya is thrust into the spotlight, instantly branded by the local townspeople and law enforcement as the prime suspect for his murder.
Jamie Foxx, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, January Jones, Maika Monroe, and Andrew Dice Clay are set to star in the action-thriller, God Is A Bullet. Written and directed by Nick Cassavetes and based on the novel of the same name by Boston Teran, the film centers on vice detective, Bob Hightower (Coster-Waldau), who finds his ex-wife murdered and daughter kidnapped by a satanic cult. Frustrated by the botched official investigations, he quits the force, gets tattoos, and infiltrates the cult to hunt down the cult leader with the help of the cult’s only female victim escapee, Case Hardin (Monroe). Foxx will play the pivotal supporting role of "The Ferryman."
Max Beesley has joined the cast of Guy Ritchie’s untitled latest action thriller, formerly known as Five Eyes, opposite Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett, and Cary Elwes. The feature follows an MI6 agent (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. Beesley plays a respectable lawyer and consigliere to a billionaire arms broker (Hartnett), who can "also handle himself in a fight."
Signature Entertainment has acquired the mob crime-drama, The Birthday Cake, for UK-Ireland and Australia-New Zealand. The film follows Giovanni (Shiloh Fernandez) who, on the 10th anniversary of his father’s death, reluctantly accepts the task of bringing a cake to the home of his uncle, a mob boss, for a celebration. Just two hours into the night, Gio’s life is forever changed after witnessing a murder and learning the truth about what happened to his late father. The film also stars Ewan McGregor, Val Kilmer, Lorraine Bracco, and William Fichtner.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Spectrum Originals has given a 10-episode order to Joe Pickett, a drama series based on C.J. Box’s bestselling novels. Michael Dorman (Patriot, For All Mankind) has been tapped for the title role. Joe Pickett follows a game warden and his family as they navigate the changing political and socio-economic climate in a small rural town in Wyoming. Surrounded by rich history and vast wildlife, the township hides decades of schemes and secrets that are yet to be uncovered. The series will air for a nine-month exclusive run on Spectrum.
Clive Owen is set to star in Monsieur Spade, a one-hour drama series from Scott Frank (The Queen's Gambit) and Tom Fontana (City on a Hill). The predominantly French language series centers around writer Dashiell Hammett’s great detective, Sam Spade (Owen) who has been quietly living out his golden years in the small town of Bozuls in the South of France. It’s 1963, the Algerian War has just ended, and in a very short time, so, too, will Spade’s tranquility.
Matthew McConaughey is attached to star in a series adaptation of the John Grisham novel, A Time for Mercy, which is currently in development at HBO. The book, published in 2020, is a follow-up to Grisham’s books, A Time to Kill and Sycamore Row, which center on the character of attorney Jake Brigance. In A Time for Mercy, Brigance must defend a young man who killed his mother’s boyfriend, a deputy sheriff, with the boy claiming the man was abusive towards his mother, himself, and his little sister.
FX is in early development on a drama based on Elmore Leonard's novel, City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. The story centers on Raymond Cruz, a Detroit homicide detective, and his quest to bring a killer nicknamed the "Oklahoma Wildman" to justice after the latter kills a judge. Leonard's novella, Fire in the Hole, served as source material for the popular TV series, Justified, and there is some talk of bringing the show's star, Timothy Olyphant, back to play U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens in the new project.
Wiip, the independent studio created by former ABC chief, Paul Lee, is developing Young Agatha, a TV series exploring the teenage years of Agatha Christie, the iconic British crime writer behind genre-defining characters including Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. The project will tell the story of how a precocious teenager mourning her father’s death became one of the most prolific and beloved mystery novelists of all time. Set in the early 1900s in Devon, England, the series is being described as "an action-packed drama," and a “dynamic and supercharged coming-of-age story."
In a competitive situation, Peacock has landed Poker Face, a mystery drama from Knives Out director, Rian Johnson, set to star Natasha Lyonne. Plot details about the series are being kept under wraps, but Johnson said, "I’m very excited to dig into the type of fun, character driven, case-of-the-week mystery goodness I grew up watching."
BritBox, the BBC and ITV’s joint-venture streamer, has acquired ITV’s John Simm drama, Grace, for the U.S. and Canada, set to premiere on April 27. Told as two feature-length episodes, Grace is from Endeavour creator, Russell Lewis, and is an adaptation of the first two of Peter James’s Roy Grace crime novels, Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead. The novels introduce Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a hard-working police officer who has given his life to the job.
EastEnders actress, Jessica Plummer, has joined Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Oyelowo in The Girl Before, the limited series for HBO Max and BBC One. Based on JP Delaney’s bestselling psychological thriller, the story follows Jane (Mbatha-Raw), a traumatized woman who falls in love with an extraordinary minimalist house, which remains under the spell of the architect (Oyelowo) who originally designed it. But when she discovers that another damaged woman died in the same property three years earlier, she starts to wonder if her own story is just a rerun of the girl before.
Writer/producer David Eick (Battlestar Galactica) is developing a remake of 1973 feature film, Walking Tall, which is being set up as a two-hour TV movie at the Peacock streaming service with hope of future installments or an ongoing series. The original was based on the life of Sheriff Buford Pusser and starred Joe Don Baker as the professional wrestler turned lawman. The reboot will star WWE's Charlotte Flair playing a Tucson cop who finds herself caught in a web of fraud, exploitation, and murder and is forced to go full vigilante to protect her home town.
Killing Eve is coming to an end with its delayed fourth season (set to premiere in 2022), but BBC America is developing a number of potential spinoffs. The cat-and-mouse thriller stars Jodie Comer as assassin, Villannelle, and Sandra Oh, as British intelligence agent, Eve Polastri. The network and production company didn’t disclose specific spinoff ideas, but some have suggested potential targets might be The Twelve, the shadowy organization that is associated with Villanelle, or The Bitter Pill, a group of investigative journalists that help Polastri investigate.
Canadian series, Burden of Truth, has been canceled and will wrap up with its Season 4 finale. Debuting on CBC in July of 2018, and airing in the U.S. on The CW, the legal drama centered on Joanna Hanley (Kristin Kreuk), a big city lawyer who returned to her hometown to take the case of a number of girls grappling with a perplexing illness. Created by Brad Simpson, the series also starred Peter Mooney, Star Slade, Meegwun Fairbrother, Anwen O’Driscoll, and Nicola Correia-Damude.
AMC Networks streamer, Acorn TV, has renewed its darkly comic British crime series, Queens Of Mystery, for a second season, with production already underway in southeast England. The show follows a perennially single female detective and her three well-known crime writing aunts, who help her solve whodunit-style murders as well as set her up on blind dates. Olivia Vinall played detective Matilda Stone in the first season, but will be replaced by Florence Hall in the second due to a scheduling conflict. Julie Graham, Sarah Woodward, and Siobhan Redmond return as Stone’s aunts.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the first two chapters of Out of Time by Cathi Stoler, as read by actor Ian Jones.
Writer Types host, Eric Beetner, was joined by Greg Levin (author of The Exit Man and Sick To Death) as co-host in the latest episode. They chatted with debut medical thriller author, Tammy Euliano (Fatal Intent), thriller writer, Rio Youers (Lola On Fire), and true crime author, Harold Schechter (Maniac).
Suspense Radio welcomed debut author, Susan Ouellette, to talk about her book, The Wayward Spy, and how her background in the CIA made her the perfect fit to become a writer of spy thrillers.
David Heska Wanbli Weiden, a citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss his Edgar-nominated novel, Winter Counts, as well as exploring the setting for the book, a Native American reservation.
My Favorite Detective Stories spoke with Daniel J. Waters, an open-heart surgeon who's authored several medical books as well as a thriller series featuring Surf City Police Chief, Mickey Cleary.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club discussed books by Irish mystery authors Carlene O'Connor, Olivia Kiernan, and Graham Norton
Queer Writers of Crime spoke with JB Sanders, author of a satirical "Hardy Boys" style mystery series, about the fine balance between suspense and humor.
Rachel Howzell-Hall was interviewed by Robert Justice for Crime Writers of Color. Hall writes the acclaimed Lou Norton series, has been nominated for the Anthony, Lefty, and Thriller Awards, and co-wrote The Good Sister with James Patterson.
Listening to the Dead was joined by pathologist Dr. Brett Lockyer, part of the experienced team at Forensic Access, to reveal how to tell the difference between strangulation and hanging during a post mortem, and where best to look for evidence that a suicide is not what it seems.
On Crime Time FM, Peter May talked about his new Enzo MacLeod thriller, The Night Gate; writing the "new normal" into fiction; why he’s enjoying some well earned down time; and why he's not looking forward to a coming French adaptation of one of his Chinese set novels relocated to Korea.
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