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
Twilight franchise actor, Peter Facinelli, has signed on to direct his third feature film with the crime thriller, Headhunter. The story follows a twisted murder who sends three detectives on a whirlwind investigation revealing dark secrets and turning everyone into a possible suspect. Rich Ronat (Grand Isle) penned the script.
Fresh off his Oscar nomination for his performance as Sam Cooke in One Night in Miami, Leslie Odom Jr. has joined the growing ensemble of Knives Out 2. Daniel Craig returns to star as super sleuth, Benoit Blanc, with Kathryn Hahn, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, and Edward Norton also recently joining the cast. It was also announced just a few days ago that Kate Hudson will be involved with the project, although the plot and therefore all of the various actor roles are still under wraps.
Mel Gibson and Elisha Cuthbert are joining Josh Duhamel in the heist thriller, Bandit. The project is based on author Robert Knuckle’s novel and journalist Ed Arnold’s interviews with Gilbert Galvan Jr., who went by the name Robert Whiteman. Whiteman (to be played by Duhamel) was dubbed the Flying Bandit for successfully pulling off over sixty bank and jewelry heists during a notorious crime spree after he became involved with a lifetime gangster (played by Gibson).
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Synchronicity Films is following up its BBC drama, The Cry, with another Helen Fitzgerald television adaptation, this time based on her 2009 novel, Bloody Women. The production company has signed up Lorna Martin, the co-creator of Women on the Verge alongside Sharon Horgan, to adapt the novel into an eight-part, darkly comedic thriller. Bloody Women tells the story of 33-year-old Cat Marsden, who decides to lay her past to rest before settling down to a new life in Italy with her fiancé. She decides to meet up with her previous partners, but on the morning of her wedding, Cat is arrested for murder - not just one murder, but three, with all of the victims ex-boyfriends who were viciously mutilated. Now she’s in jail, and the woman who is writing her biography has interviewed many people in Cat’s life—but no one is telling the truth
Netflix has given an eight-episode series order to an untitled global spy adventure starring and executive produced by Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first major foray into scripted television. In the series, created by Nick Santora (Jack Reacher; The Fugitive), a father (Schwarzenegger) and daughter (Monica Barbaro) learn that they’ve each secretly been working as CIA Operatives for years and realize their entire relationship has been a lie. Forced to team up as partners, the series "tackles universal family dynamics set against a global backdrop of spies, fantastic action, and humor."
ITV is adapting Graham Norton’s novel, Holding, for television. The four-part series will star Conleth Hill (Game of Thrones; Dublin Murders; Vienna Blood) who will take the leading role of local police officer, Sergeant PJ Collins, a gentle mountain of a man, who hides from people and fills his days with comfort food and half-hearted police work. When the body of long-lost local legend Tommy Burke is discovered, PJ is called to solve a serious crime for the first time in his career and has to connect with the village he has tried hard to avoid.
Kathleen Turner has been tapped for a lead role opposite Woody Harrelson, Justin Theroux, and Domhnall Gleeson in The White House Plumbers, HBO’s five-part limited series that revisits one of the biggest political scandals in American history, Watergate. Turner will play Dita Beard, a crusty, foul-mouthed lobbyist for the ITT corporation involved in some dirty deals with the Nixon Administration.
Alison Sweeney and Cameron Mathison are back in a new Hallmark mystery titled Murder, She Baked. The stars are reprising their characters from the popular Hallmark Movies & Mysteries franchise based on the Hannah Swensen mystery novels by Joanne Fluke. Sweeney will again play Hannah Swensen, with Mathison returning as Mike Kingston and Barbara Niven as Hannah's mother, Delores Swensen. Production begins this week in Vancouver on the movie, which will premiere this summer on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.
Jon Bernthal, Josh Charles, and Jamie Hector have been tapped as the leads of HBO’s We Own This City limited series from The Wire’s EP David Simon and producer George Pelecanos. Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men) is set to direct and executive produce the series, based on Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton’s book, We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption. The project chronicles the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force — and the corruption and moral collapse that befell an American city in which the policies of drug prohibition and mass arrest were championed at the expense of actual police work.
Bruce McGill (Rizzoli & Isles), Maria Sten (Swamp Thing), and Hugh Thompson (Chapelwaite) have been tapped as series regulars opposite Alan Ritchson in the upcoming Amazon original series, Reacher, based on the Jack Reacher character from Lee Child’s international bestselling books. The first season, written and exec produced by Nick Santora (who also serves as showrunner), is based on the first Reacher novel, The Killing Floor, set in Georgia.
Juliette Binoche is set to star alongside Toni Collette, Colin Firth, and Rosemarie DeWitt in The Staircase, HBO Max’s drama adaptation based on the French true-crime documentary series. The eight-episode project from Antonio Campos and American Crime Story writer, Maggie Cohn, explores the life of Michael Peterson (Firth), his sprawling North Carolina family, and the suspicious death of his wife, Kathleen (Collette).
Alexa Mansour has joined the cast of Apple TV+’s Home Before Dark. Set to return on Friday, June 11, season two of the mystery drama follows reporter, Hilde Lisko (Brooklynn Prince), as she seeks to learn more about a mysterious explosion that hits a local farm. The investigation leads her to fight a powerful and influential corporation, jeopardizing the health of her family and Erie Harbor. Inspired by real-life young investigative journalist Hilde Lysiak, Home Before Dark also stars Abby Miller, Kylie Rogers, Aziza Scott, Michael Weston, Joelle Carter, Jibrail Nantambu, Deric McCabe, and Rio Mangini.
Betty Gabriel (Get Out) has been tapped for a regular role in the upcoming third season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, starring John Krasinski. Gabriel, who will play Elizabeth Wright, the Chief of Station, replaces Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who was originally hired for the part last fall but exited the series over creative differences. Season 3 of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan finds the iconic spy (Krasinski) on the run and in a race against time when Jack is wrongly implicated in a larger conspiracy and suddenly finds himself a fugitive out in the cold.
The NBCUniversal streaming service, Peacock, has released a trailer for Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. The project (formerly known as 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. The cast also includes Valorie Curry, Sumalee Montano, Rick Gonzalez, Eddie Izzard, and Beau Knapp.
The BBC released a first-look image for the Martin Freeman drama, The Responder. Freeman stars as Chris, a crisis-stricken, morally compromised, unconventional urgent response officer tackling a series of night shifts on the beat in Liverpool.
Also, CBS released trailers for its new series including NCIS: Hawai'i, FBI: International, and CSI: Vegas.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
Ellen Byron joined Eric Beetner as co-host of Writer Types to talk cozy mysteries and help introduce legendary thriller writer, Linwood Barclay (Find You First), and debut author, Mia Manansala (Arsenic and Adobo). Eric and Ellen were also joined by Jennifer J Chow and Olivia Matthews to discuss the origins of the cozy mystery as we know it today.
Queer Writers of Crime spoke with Alan R. Warren, author of several true crime books and host of the radio show, House of Mystery, now is in its tenth year on NBC in Los Angeles and other stations around the country.
Read or Dead took a look at reads set in the wilderness, particularly national parks.
Suspense Radio welcomed Cate Holahan, formerly an award-winning journalist and lead singer of Leaving Kinzley, an original rock band in NYC, turned bestselling author of domestic suspense novels. Holahan's fifth book, Her Three Lives, was just published in April.
Meet the Thriller Author spoke with Jeffery Deaver, bestselling author and creator of the Lincoln Rhyme series, about The Final Twist, the latest Colter Shaw novel which was published on May 11th.
Wrong Place, Write Crime chatted with Elizabeth Splaine about her various books, including Devil's Grace and the forthcoming, Swan Song.
The latest episode of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine podcast featured James Tipton reading from his series featuring Dr. John Watson, the story "The Beast of Easedale Tarn."
Crime Time FM sat down with Tim Glister to discuss his new novel, Red Corona, and the eight books that set him on the path to becoming a spy writer.
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