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
Mel Gibson will take on another big action role in the thriller, Hot Seat, starring alongside Chad Michael Murray (One Tree Hill), with James Cullen Bressack set to direct. Based on a story by Leon Langford and Collin Watts, Hot Seat centers on an ex-hacker forced to break into banking institutions by an anonymous man who planted a bomb under his chair at his office. Gibson’s character plays the man who must try to enter the booby-trapped building to get the young man off the "hot seat."
Mike Pniewski, Thad Luckinbill, Sky Ferreira, James Devoti, and Michael Beasley will round out the cast of Netflix’s crime thriller, Reptile (appearing alongside previously announced cast members Benicio Del Toro, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Silverstone, Michael Pitt, Ato Essandoh, Frances Fisher, Eric Bogosian, Domenick Lombardozzi, Karl Glusman, Matilda Lutz, Owen Teague, and Catherine Dyer). The story is set in motion by the brutal murder of a young real estate agent and centers on a hardened detective (Del Toro) as he attempts to uncover the truth in a case where nothing is as it seems. In doing so, he finds himself dismantling the illusions in his own life. The film marks the feature directorial debut of Grant Singer, known previously for his work in directing music videos and commercials.
Tony Goldwyn and Paul Ben-Victor have joined Gerard Butler in Lionsgate’s action thriller, The Plane. Goldwyn will play Scarsdale, an ex-Special Forces officer who is now a corporate crisis manager and fixer. Ben-Victor will play Hampton, owner of the airline. The Plane, directed by Jean-François Richet, follows commercial pilot Brodie Torrance (Butler) who, after a heroic job of successfully landing his storm-damaged aircraft in hostile territory, finds himself threatened by militant pirates who are planning to take the plane and its passengers hostage. As the world’s authorities and media search for the disappeared aircraft, Brodie must rise to the occasion and keep his passengers safe long enough for help to arrive.
Mayans M.C. star, JD Pardo, has come aboard the Robert Rodriguez action-thriller, Hypnotic, joining Ben Affleck, Alice Braga, Dayo Okeniyi, William Fichtner, and Hala Finley. Currently filming in Texas, Hypnotic follows a detective (Affleck) who becomes entangled in a mystery involving his missing daughter (Finley) and a secret government program—while investigating a string of impossible high-end crimes.
Mena Suvari will star alongside Dermot Mulroney and Darren Mann in Breakwater, an indie project from writer-director James Rowe and Loose Cannon Pictures. The crime thriller revolves around Dovey (Mann), a young ex-con who breaks his parole and crosses state lines in order to track down the estranged daughter of fellow inmate Ray Childress (Mulroney). Suvari will portray Kendra, the audacious and alluring manager of a restaurant near the state prison, who offers newly released inmates their first taste of the outside world.
Abbie Cornish and Laz Alonso have signed on to headline Detained, a psychological thriller from director Felipe Mucci. The film follows a woman (Cornish) who wakes up in an isolated police interrogation room with no memory of the night prior. The cops in the station proceed to make some wild allegations as they interrogate her, and there's an eerie vibe that there's something "not quite right" about this particular station or the cops who are running it.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICE
Entertainment One has acquired the rights to bestselling author Lisa Gardner’s novel, Before She Disappeared, with Oscar-winner Hillary Swank set to star and executive produce via her Film Bandits banner. Gardner’s novel follows Frankie Elkin, a recovering alcoholic who travels light and is obsessed with locating missing people whose cases have been dismissed, overlooked, or marginalized.
HBO Max is developing Aloha MotherF**ker, a drama series based on Jason Ryan’s best-selling novel, Hell-Bent. The story centers on Renee, a divorced mom in her 40s, who heads to Hawaii to start her own investigation when cops fail to find her son’s killers. She uncovers rampant disorganized crime and systemic corruption within the police and legal system, before inadvertently finding a new place for herself in the world.
Although it had been announced before the start of the latest NCIS season, its 18th, that star Mark Harmon (playing Leroy Jethro Gibbs) would be appearing in fewer episodes, it turns out last week's is going to be his last. Harmon reportedly was ready to hang up Gibbs’s cap after last season, but learned that if he did so, CBS might not renew NCIS at all. As such, he agreed to return in a limited capacity. But in the fourth episode of Season 19—after Gibbs and the team solved the case of a contract killer hired by a conglomerate to clear the way for an environment-poisoning copper mine—Gibbs decided not to take back his badge, gun and job, when offered by Director Vance, but stay put in "the middle of nowhere" in Alaska, where this multi-episode arc had most recently led him.
Emma Corrin will star in FX’s limited series, Retreat. The project centers on the "Gen Z amateur sleuth," Darby Hart (Corrin), who is invited by a reclusive billionaire to participate in a retreat at a remote and dazzling location. When one of the other guests is found dead, Darby must fight to prove it was murder against a tide of competing interests and before the killer strikes again.
ABC is developing a legal drama written and executive produced by Bill Chais (a former public defender), and Pat Cunnane, who was President Barack Obama’s Senior Writer and Deputy Director of Messaging at the White House. In the untitled project, a brash Bronx public defender comes to North Carolina to reform a dysfunctional, seriously underfunded criminal justice system, putting him on a collision course with the tough-on-crime governor. Desperate and out of options, he invokes an arcane law that can compel any attorney to serve as defense counsel in criminal trials…and assigns the first case to the governor herself, an attorney in good standing.
Lin Shaye is set to star in and exec-produce the action-thriller, Ellen. The six-episode series will follow a nefarious land developer who gets more than he bargained for when he tries to intimidate an 80-year-old widow (Shaye) into abandoning her Montana ranch. The series will be directed by the filmmaker duo, Clif Prowse and Derek Lee (Afflicted), with a script from Tim Walker.
Just days before the premiere of You season 3, Netflix has renewed the stalker drama for a fourth season. The series, which is based on Caroline Kepnes's novels, follows Joe (Penn Badgley) as he quite literally does anything for love—and then deals with the consequences.
Octavio Pisano, who portrays Detective Joe Velasco on Law & Order: SVU, has been promoted to series regular on the NBC procedural. Pisano’s Velasco is a former undercover cop and detective under Chief McGrath (Terry Serpico) who’s been assigned to the SVU and has appeared in 3 episodes so far, beginning with the season 23 premiere. Season 23 picked up mere hours after last season’s finale, where Catalina Machado (Zabryna Guevara) was arrested for trafficking single mothers living in shelters in a complex housing-for-sex scheme. She now wants to flip on her superiors in exchange for a deal with the feds, and names a powerful congressman as the big fish. It’s a make-or-break case for the NYPD and puts enormous pressure on the entire SVU squad to get a conviction.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, starring John Krasinski, has been renewed for a fourth season ahead of the show's Season 3 premiere on Amazon Prime Video. Additionally, Michael Peña is set to join the Season 4 cast in an undisclosed role. Season 3 finds Jack Ryan (Krasinski) on the run and in a race against time when he's wrongly implicated in a larger conspiracy and finds himself a fugitive out in the cold. Now, wanted by both the CIA and an international rogue faction he's uncovered, Jack is forced underground in Europe while trying to stay alive and prevent a massive global conflict. Also set to return for the third season are Wendell Pierce as James Greer and Michael Kelly as Mike November.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed William Kent Krueger to talk about his Cork O'Connor series; his novel, Saving Grace; and writing, logging, and nostalgia. Plus Maria Marotti discussed her book, The Etruscan Princess; Lance Wright shared some new releases from Down & Out Books; and Elizabeth Splaine, James Swallow, Sarah Adlahka, and Sheila Lowe offered up some book recommendations.
Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Rory Clements, a British author of historical thrillers. He won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award in 2010 for his novel, Revenger, and the CWA Historical Dagger in 2018 for Nucleus. His latest novel, A Prince and a Spy, is his first novel to be published in America, but it’s the fifth book in his Tom Wilde series.
The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke with historical novelist, Elodie Harper, about The Wolf Den, set in the brothels of ancient Pompeii. They also discussed French literature and the podcast's own Abir Mukherjee's recent trip to France.
On the latest Crime Time FM, Paul Burke shared his thoughts on some of the new crime, mystery, and thriller releases.
THEATRE
The world premiere theatrical adaptation of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is set to tour the U.K. January 10 – November 12, 2022. Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel have adapted the best-seller, about a professor and symbologist trying to crack the code to solve a murder and reveal a well-guarded, centuries-old religious mystery. Olivier winner Nigel Harman will play professor Robert Langdon, Danny John-Jules will play Sir Leigh Teabing, and Hannah Rose Caton will play Sophie Neveu.
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