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
Morgan Freeman and Yellowstone’s Cole Hauser are set to star in the action thriller, Muti, from director George Gallo. The feature film follows a detective (Hauser) who is unable to process the death of his daughter and embarks on a hunt for a serial killer whose crimes are based on a brutal tribal ritual known as MUTI. The detective recruits the help of a professor and African anthropologist (Freeman) who hides an unspeakable secret but allows the detective to go deeper into the killer’s world, revealing one man’s insanity is another man’s religion.
Mena Suvari and Danielle Harris have joined the cast and production team of the psychological thriller, Anne, With Love, starring Blaine Morris. George Henry Horton (Dreadspace) will direct the film from a script he co-wrote with Morris. Among the supporting cast are Jaime Gallagher, Luke Barnett, Rocky Perez, Anwar Wolf, Leonard Amoia, Lucy Werner, Hunter Brown, and Robert H. Lambert. The story follows Anne (Morris), a painter who struggles with inner demons after being forced into a life of solitude when her husband leaves mysteriously. Suvari will play her closest confidant, Maya, who has a dark secret of her own. Harris will play Anne’s neighbor, who has several striking similarities in both her appearance and life.
Olivia Scott Welch has signed on to star opposite George Baron in The Blue Rose, a surreal genre-bender that Baron wrote and is directing in his feature debut. The noir pic is set in the 1950s, following the one-night journey of two rookie detectives as they set out to solve a homicide, only to find themselves in an alternate reality made up of their worst nightmares. Welch will play Detective Lilly, with Baron portraying Detective Dalton.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICE
Aaron Magnani has acquired rights to Capital Crimes, the 32-part crime thriller book series originated by President Harry S. Truman’s daughter, Margaret Truman, with plans to adapt them into a TV series. The potential adaptation will center on the books’ hero, Robert Brixton, a rugged former cop and special operator who served with SITQUAL, a private security arm of the State Department. Brixton’s skills, as one of the few internationally licensed private investigators, are put to use against an assortment of villains and plots seeking to do the country great harm.
Peacock has handed a straight-to-series order for a ten-part crime drama set in Australia, hailing from Matchbox Pictures, the production company behind Cate Blanchett’s Stateless. Irreverant was created by Paddy Macrae (Wanted) and follows a criminal from Chicago who bungles a heist and is forced to hide out in a small Australian reef town in Far North Queensland posing as the new church Reverend.
All Rise may have a new life on a new network. OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network is in talks for a new season of the legal drama starring Simone Missick, three months after the series was cancelled by CBS. All Rise is set in Los Angeles and centers on Judge Lola Carmichael (Missick), a highly regarded and impressive deputy district attorney "who doesn’t intend to sit back on the bench in her new role, but instead leans in, immediately pushing the boundaries and challenging the expectations of what a judge can be."
Josh Duhamel has been tapped to star opposite Renée Zellweger in NBC’s limited series, The Thing About Pam. Based on a stranger-than-fiction story featured on Dateline NBC, The Thing About Pam centers around the murder of Betsy Faria that resulted in the conviction of her husband, Russ, though he insisted he didn’t kill her. His conviction was later overturned. The brutal crime set off a chain of events that would expose a diabolical scheme deeply involving another woman, Pam Hupp (Zellweger). Duhamel will play Joel Schwartz, the defense attorney for Russ Faria.
Oscar nominee, Chloë Sevigny, is set as a lead opposite Elle Fanning and Colton Ryan in the Hulu drama, The Girl From Plainville. Based off the Esquire article by Jesse Barron, the limited series will explore Michelle Carter’s (Fanning) relationship with Conrad "Coco" Roy III (Ryan) and the events that led to his death and her controversial conviction of involuntary manslaughter. Sevigny will play Lynn Roy, Coco’s mother.
The Americans alum, Noah Emmerich, has been tapped for a major role opposite Zahn McClarnon and Kiowa Gordon in Dark Winds, AMC’s Western noir thriller series based on Tony Hillerman’s popular Leaphorn & Chee book series. With a six-episode order, the psychological thriller follows two Navajo police officers, Joe Leaphorn (McClarnon) and Jim Chee (Gordon), in the 1970s Southwest as the search for clues in a grisly double-murder case forces them to challenge their own spiritual beliefs and come to terms with the trauma of their pasts. Emmerich will play Whitover, a burned-out FBI agent whose once-promising career is dying on the vine. A brazen robbery puts him back in the big time, but first he must enlist the help of the Navajo Tribal Police led by Lieutenant Leaphorn.
ABC is rounding out the recurring cast for the second season of its popular drama series, Big Sky, with the addition of Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Madelyn Kientz, Troy Johnson, Lola Reid, Jeremy Ray Taylor, TV Carpio, and Arturo Del Puerto. In Season 2 of the David E. Kelley series, based on the books by C.J. Box, when private detectives Cassie Dewell (Kylie Bunbury) and Jenny Hoyt (Katheryn Winnick) reunite to investigate a car wreck outside of Helena, Montana, they soon discover the case might not be as straightforward as it seems. As they unravel the mystery of the accident, their worlds will collide with a band of unsuspecting teens, a flirtatious face from Jenny’s past, and a vicious outsider hellbent on finding answers.
If you want to know when your favorite TV show is returning (and when new ones are set to debut), check out this calendar of premiere dates, courtesy of Deadline.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
The latest Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast features an excerpt from One of Us by Lorie Lewis Ham (who is also the executive producer and director of the podcast), as read by actor Casey Ballard.
NPR book critic, Maureen Corrigan, spoke about the recent spate of author-manuscript-theft plots in crime fiction, with a look at Laura Lippman's Dream Girl.
NPR's Fresh Air looked at how David E. Kelley and actor Nicole Kidman have joined forces again to adapt another Liane Moriarty novel for Hulu, Nine Perfect Strangers, a miniseries that is "unorthodox and impeccably cast."
Queer Writers of Crime spoke with Lucy Sussex about her prize-winning Blockbuster! nonfiction book which profiles Fergus Hume’s 1886 book, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in Melbourne and the biggest selling detective novel of the 1800s.
Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer Saralyn Richard, author of the Detective Oliver Parrott mysteries, for the Crime Cafe podcast.
Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Terry Roberts to chat about his historical thrillers.
Crime Time FM chatted with Daniel Cole about his new thriller, Mimic, and the coming TV series of his debut novel, Ragdoll.
In the latest episode of The Red Hot Chili Writers, S.A. Cosby, the award-winning author of Razorblade Tears, discussed a new "Writing Crime Fiction" course, and reviewed the Tokyo Olympics, including taking certain Olympic events to task.
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