It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:
AWARDS
The winners of the Golden Globe Awards, handed out annually by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, were presented last night via a virtual ceremony. This year's awards have been tempered by both the Covid-19 pandemic and several controversies, including the lack of diversity and antitrust accusations. But the show must go on, apparently. The winners of note for crime drama fans include Best Performance By An Actress In A Motion Picture: Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday; Best Supporting Actress, Jodie Foster for The Mauritanian; Best Supporting Actor, Daniel Kaluuya for Judas and the Black Messiah; Best Screenplay, Aaron Sorkin for The Trial of the Chicago 7.
THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES
Director David Fincher and actor Michael Fassbender are teaming up for The Killer, Fincher’s long-gestating assassin drama that may finally go before cameras this year, according to Hollywood Reporter. In a deal that is still coming together, Fassbender would star as an assassin who begins to psychologically crack as he develops a conscience, even while his clients continue to demand his skills. The story is based on a hardboiled-noir French graphic novel of the same name written by Alexis Nolent (under the pen name Matz) and artist Luc Jacamon.
Ryan Gosling is set to star in and produce an upcoming thriller called The Actor from director Duke Johnson. The film is based on Donald Westlake's novel, Memory, with Johnson and Stephen Cooney penning the screenplay. The story centers on New York actor Paul Cole (Gosling), who's beaten and left for dead in 1950s Ohio. Stripped of his memory and stranded in a mysterious small town, Paul struggles to get back home and reclaim what he’s lost.
Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan are set to star in a thriller called Black Flies that will be directed by filmmaker, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. The project is based on Shannon Burke’s novel of the same name and follows two paramedics driving the streets of New York in an ambulance — one a young student who dreams of going to medical school and the other a grizzled veteran and one of the city’s best medics. Black Flies is described as "a thriller about the toll that saving lives inflicts on paramedics, and the film aims to give a street-view look at one paramedic’s struggle to feel he’s making a difference."
Christian Bale and director Scott Cooper are set to make their third film together in Cooper’s scripted adaptation of the Louis Bayard novel, The Pale Blue Eye. The thriller revolves around the attempt to solve a series of murders that took place in 1830 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Bale will play a veteran detective who investigates the murders, helped by a detail-oriented young cadet who will later become a world famous author, Edgar Allan Poe.
Ray Donovan fans will finally get a satisfactory ending to their favorite Showtime series. Donovan's fixer character is returning in a feature-length film that will pick up where season seven left off after its surprise cancellation last year. Liev Schreiber will return as Donovan and will co-write the script with series showrunner, David Hollander, who will also direct. Jon Voight will reprise his role as Mickey Donovan, as will Kerris Dorsey as Ray’s daughter, Bridget. Production is tentatively scheduled to begin later this year in New York.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins will be sleuthing his way back to the screen. Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television has closed a deal to develop and produce a television series adapted from Walter Mosley’s bestselling gritty historical fiction mystery series starring Rawlins, one of literature’s most popular Black investigators. The drama, based on Mosley’s fifteen novels and collection of short stories centered on the WWII army veteran turned hard-boiled private eye, will be set in 1950s Los Angeles. The last time Rawlins fans saw the P.I. off the pages and on the screen was Denzel Washington’s rendition of the protagonist in the 1995 neo-noir crime thriller, Devil in a Blue Dress.
ViacomCBS has several series adapted from Paramount’s library of films in the pipeline for the streaming service Paramount+. The adaptations that Paramount Television Studios will produce include a series based on the psychosexual thriller, Fatal Attraction; another on the heist film, The Italian Job; and a third on the political thriller, The Parallax View. The projects also join a previously announced series based on The Godfather. Most of these are described as "reimagining" storylines, with the Italian Job series going so far as to center on the grandchildren of Michael Caine’s Charlie Croker character in the 1969 film.
Jeremy Renner is set as the lead in Paramount+’s anticipated drama series, Mayor of Kingstown, from Yellowstone co-creator, Taylor Sheridan. Mayor of Kingstown follows the McLusky family – power brokers in Kingstown, Michigan - where the business of incarceration is the only thriving industry. Tackling themes of systemic racism, corruption and inequality, the series provides a stark look at their attempt to bring order and justice to a town that has neither.
Taylor Kitsch has been cast to star alongside Chris Pratt in the Amazon thriller series, The Terminal List. The series, based on the Jack Carr novel of the same name, follows James Reece (Pratt) after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. Kitsch will play Ben Edwards, a former SEAL and James Reece’s best friend. Now a member of CIA Ground Branch, Edwards uses his intelligence access and operator skill set to help Reece seek his vengeance.
Last week, it was announced that a Criminal Minds reboot might be in the works, and this week brings word that Paramount+ also has plans for a companion unscripted series. Tentatively titled The Real Criminal Minds, the true-crime docuseries will feature a real former FBI profiler and examine real cases and real criminal behavior, illustrated by clips from the fictional Criminal Minds series.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
Colson Whitehead, author of The Nickel Boys, a novel about a reform school in Florida that operated for 111 years and had its history of abuse exposed by a university's investigation, was interviewed on CBS's 60 Minutes program.
It was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured a tribute to Black mystery authors.
Crime Writers of Color welcomed Bianca Sloane, author of the suspense novels What You Don’t Know, Sweet Little Lies, Every Breath You Take and Killing Me Softly (previously published as Live and Let Die).
A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the mystery short story, "Still Life" by Lori Rader-Day, as read by actor Cha Yang.
A second season of Lynda La Plante's Listening to the Dead true crime podcast launched with an episode titled, "Cause of Death - Blunt Force Trauma."
Read or Dead hosts, Katie and Nusrah, talked about mystery and thriller reads featuring romance gone right, and romance gone very wrong.
Meet the Thriller Author spoke with bestselling author Mark Greaney, whose debut international thriller, The Gray Man, was published in 2009 and became a national bestseller and a highly sought-after Hollywood property. Ten subsequent Gray Man novels have been released to date, including his latest, Relentless. Mark is also the author or coauthor of seven Tom Clancy novels and collaborated with Tom Clancy on three Jack Ryan novels before Tom’s death in 2013.
Eliza Lentzski was this week's featured author on Queer Writers of Crime. Eliza is a historian by day who has also authored lesbian fiction and romance novels, including the best-selling series Winter Jacket and Don’t Call Me Hero.
Criminal Mischief took on the topic of "Setting As Character." Can a story be set just anywhere? Some can, but most rely on the location and time period to underpin and amplify the story.
Wrong Place, Write Crime chatted with Martin Roy Hill about his latest book, The Fourth Rising.
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