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
Spider-Man: Homecoming director, Jon Watts, is writing, directing, and producing a movie that will bring George Clooney and Brad Pitt together again. According to The Hollywood Reporter, once the project was made known, just about every studio and streaming service jumped in to bid on it. Details about the movie itself are being held close to the vest, but the movie is apparently about two "lone wolf fixers" who get assigned to the same job.
Harry Potter screenwriter, Steve Kloves, has found a more adult project to take on, as he is set to adapt Flynn Berry’s New York Times bestselling novel, Northern Spy, for Netflix. The story is set in the midst of renewed sectarian violence in Northern Ireland and follows a woman who learns that her younger sister has not only been working for the IRA but also has become an MI5 informer. To protect her family, the older sister helps pass information to MI5, but the IRA eventually tries to conscript her.
Kevin Hart and F. Gary Gray are teaming up on the drama, Lift, for Netflix, a heist film that Netflix acquired last March as a spec script by Dan Kunka. Hart will play a master thief who is wooed by his ex-girlfriend and the FBI to pull off an impossible heist with his international crew on a 777 flying from London to Zurich.
Although Chris Hemsworth’s black ops mercenary character, Tyler Rake, appeared to have met his end at the close of Extraction, the actor confirmed today that he will be back for Extraction 2, as Netflix unveiled a teaser for the sequel. Hemsworth will re-team on the follow-up film with director Sam Hargrave, as well as producers Joe and Anthony Russo. The original action-thriller penned by Joe Russo was based on the graphic novel, Ciudad, and followed Rake’s efforts to rescue Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal)—the son of an Indian crime lord—and watched as his mission went awry after he was double-crossed.
Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians), Noomi Rapace (Prometheus), Sam Neill (Jurassic Park), and Daniela Melchior (Suicide Squad) have been quietly filming the action film, Assassin Club, in Italy. Camille Delamarre (Transporter: Refueled) is directing the movie, which has just wrapped shooting in Turin. Assassin Club takes place in the world of international spies and elite assassins where Morgan Gaines (Golding) is the best of the best. When Morgan is hired to kill six people around the world, he soon discovers all the targets are also assassins unknowingly hired to kill each other. Rapace plays Falk, the only assassin with skills to match his own. Under the guidance of his mentor Jonathan Caldwell (Neill), Morgan must defeat Falk and the other assassins to keep himself and his girlfriend Sophie (Melchior) alive.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICE
Yesterday producer, Matthew James Wilkinson, is teaming up with Poldark and Endeavour exec producer, Tom Mullens, on a TV adaptation of Scottish author Iain Banks’s thriller novel, The Business. The project follows Kate Telman, a working-class Glaswegian who has risen through the ranks to become a senior executive in a secretive super-corporation, known only as "The Business." Telman discovers that The Business is planning to buy a small country in order to secure a seat on the UN and that, despite the benevolent image and democratic structure it presents to the world, the company will stop at nothing to increase its influence. So begins a dangerous personal reckoning as Telman travels the globe, determined to uncover the conspiracy at the heart of the shady company she works for.
Chicago Med and Arrow star, Colin Donnell, is set to lead Peacock’s Australia-set crime drama, Irreverent. The series will also feature PJ Byrne, Kylie Bracknell, Briallen Clarke, Tegan Stimson, Ed Oxenbould, Wayne Blair, Russell Dykstra, Calen Tassone, and Jason Wilder as series regulars. Irreverent 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. Donnell will play Mack/Paulo, a skilled and articulate mediator who keeps the peace between organized crime families in Chicago. After a mediation goes badly wrong, Mack flees to a remote beach town in tropical Australia where he is forced to assume the identity of a Reverend in order to stay ahead of the people who want him dead.
NBC has ordered the thriller, The Endgame, from executive producers Julie Plec and Justin Lin. The series stars Morena Baccarin and Ryan Michelle Bathe as a criminal mastermind and the FBI agent trying to stop her plan. Plec will executive produce with Nicholas Wootton, and Jake Coburn, who will both write the series. As the logline states, it's "a pulse-pounding, high-stakes thriller about Elena Federova (Baccarin), a recently captured international arms dealer and brilliant criminal mastermind who even in captivity orchestrates a number of coordinated bank heists, and Val Turner (Bathe), the principled, relentless, and socially outcast FBI agent who will stop at nothing to foil her ambitious plan."
Netflix has opted not to renew the geopolitical espionage thriller, Hit & Run, co-created, executive produced and headlined by Lior Raz, for a second season. The news comes a month and a half after the release of Season 1, which ended with a major cliffhanger. Hit & Run, which also starred Sanaa Lathan, Kaelen Ohm, Moran Rosenblatt, and Gregg Henry, was well received by critics and viewers. But the sprawling drama, filmed in New York and Israel, is expensive, and due to the COVID-related industry shutdown, the nine-episode Season 1 took three years to produce. Hit & Run centers on Segev (Raz), a happily married man whose life is turned upside down when his wife is killed in a mysterious hit-and-run accident in Tel Aviv. Grief-stricken and confused, he searches for his wife’s killers, who have fled to the U.S. With the help of an ex-lover, Naomi Hicks (Lathan), he uncovers disturbing truths about his beloved wife and the secrets she kept from him.
Starz has put in development Lagordiloca, a drama series that chronicles the rise of street journalist, Priscilla Villarreal, as she capitalizes on the power of livestream reporting to expose corruption, cartels, and serial killers in the border town of Laredo, Texas. The project, Inspired by Skip Hollandsworth’s and Leif Reigstad’s articles about Villarreal in Texas Monthly, comes from playwright, film/TV writer, and filmmaker Hilary Bettis, who is penning the adaptation. A modern-day folk hero tale, Priscilla’s use of social media pushes the boundaries of freedom of speech and press to the extreme, shaking the community’s foundation to its core.
Season 9 of The Blacklist, which will be the NBC drama’s first year without now-exited star Megan Boone, will open its October 21 premiere with a time jump that will pick up with Raymond Reddington (James Spader) two years after the death of Elizabeth Keen (Boone). Per NBC, "In the two years following the death of Elizabeth Keen, Raymond Reddington (James Spader) and the members of the FBI Task Force have disbanded, their lives now changed in unexpected ways and with Reddington’s whereabouts unknown. Finding themselves each at a crossroads, a common purpose compels them to renew their original mission: to take down dangerous, vicious and eccentric Blacklisters. In the process, they begin to uncover lethal adversaries, unimaginable conspiracies, and surprising betrayals that will threaten alliances and spur vengeance for the past, led by the most devious criminal of them all – Raymond Reddington."
Steve Coogan (Philomena) has been cast as Jimmy Savile in the BBC One drama, The Reckoning. Savile rose from working-class origins to become one of the biggest stars of British television, but faced rumors of misconduct during his career. After his death in 2011, the full extent of his crimes, which included sexually abusing hundreds of child victims, was revealed. The controversial TV project will be directed by Sandra Goldbacher (Ordeal by Innocence). The production team said they are working closely with people whose lives were impacted by Savile to ensure their stories are told with sensitivity and respect. The series will look into the way Savile used his celebrity and powerful connections to conceal his wrongdoings and to hide in plain sight.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
It Was a Dark & Stormy Book Club welcomed Stephanie Kane, an attorney and author of legal thrillers. In 2020, she published Quiet Time, a mystery novel based on her own life as a witness to the murder of her future mother-in-law, a case that resulted in the killer being set free. In 2021, she published Cold Case Story, a true-crime account that ultimately led to a reopening of the case and prosecution of the perpetrator thirty years after the crime.
Thriller and horror author Dan Padavona was the latest guest on My Favorite Detective Stories, chatting about his Wolf Lake series, his Darkwater Cove series, and the Scarlett Bell series.
Read or Dead discussed books that will take you on "a twisty, turn-y journey."
On Wrong Place, Write Crime, Owen Mullen stopped by to discuss his new book, The Accused.
Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Scott Shepherd, a veteran writer/producer/show-runner of programs such as The Equalizer and Miami Vice, to talk about his debut crime novel, The Last Commandment.
On CrimeTime FM, Fiona Cummins (When I Was Ten) and David Fennell (The Art of Death) discussed why we’re so intrigued by serial killers, what makes a good thriller, and which fictional murderer they’d be most afraid to be stranded on a desert island with.
The Cozy Ink Podcast host, Leah Bailey, compiled a list of author interviews she's done with books that contain not only excellent culinary delights, but also the recipes to create them yourself.
Comments