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
Searchlight Pictures has optioned E. Nicholas Mariani’s script, The Defender, which George Tillman Jr. will direct with three-time Emmy-winning actor, Sterling K. Brown, set to star as heroic lawyer Scipio Africanus Jones. Jones was a courageous attorney who risked his life and career to defend 87 men wrongfully accused of murder in the wake of the Elaine, AR massacre of 1919, when a group of Black sharecroppers meeting in a church about unionization were attacked by a posse organized by white landowners.
Mel Gibson, who starred in the first four Lethal Weapon movies, is in talks to star in and direct the fifth installment. Gibson played cop Martin Riggs in all four films since 1987 (the last was released in 1998). Gibson would be stepping in for the late Richard Donner, director of the first four films in the franchise, who was developing the fifth movie prior to his passing in July. Richard Wenk, best known for writing Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer, penned the latest draft of the script.
Amber Sealey has signed on to direct McFarland Entertainment’s Nod If You Understand. The thriller will tell the true story of heroic stewardess, Tina Mucklow, and the mysterious hijacker known as DB Cooper, perpetrator of the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation. When Cooper boards NWA Flight 305 with a bomb on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971, Mucklow must cleverly negotiate his demands and the conflicting objectives of the FBI and airline, to save 42 lives. After extorting $200,000 in ransom and demanding the crew return him to the stormy skies with a series of very specific and life-threatening flying instructions, Cooper does the unthinkable, parachuting out of the aircraft with the money. Despite an extensive manhunt and FBI investigation, Cooper has never been located or conclusively identified.
A reboot of the 1992 hit Steven Seagal action movie, Under Siege, is underway at Warner Bros. with Timo Tjahjanto directing and Umair Aleem penning the script. The movie is being planned to stream on HBO Max. There’s no word yet if Seagal will reprise his role as Casey Ryback, the ex-Navy Seal turned cook who was the only person in that movie to stop a group of terrorists from taking control of a U.S. battleship. The movie, directed by Andrew Davis, also starred Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey and spawned a 1995 sequel Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.
Mario Bava’s cult crime movie, Rabid Dogs, is getting an English-Language remake from scribes Samuel Franco and Evan Kilgore. The original 1974 feature, an adaptation of Michael J. Carroll's short story, "Man and Boy," followed the bungled robbery by three violent criminals and the hostages they take—including a young woman, a middle-aged man, and his child—as they attempt to make a clean getaway from the police. The new production team has been working out the original film’s sexist tones to reimagine the film as a present-day thriller and the first in a trilogy.
Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, and Chris Cooper are set to join Keira Knightley in 20th Century’s Boston Strangler, written and directed by Matt Ruskin. Based on the infamous Boston Strangler murders, the project tells the true story of Loretta McLaughlin, the first reporter to connect the murders and break the story of the Strangler. She and fellow reporter, Jean Cole, challenged the sexism of the early 1960s to report on the city’s most notorious serial killer and work tirelessly to keep women informed. Loretta pursued the story at great personal risk and uncovered corruption that cast doubt on the true identity of the killer.
Daniela Melchior and François Arnaud are the latest to join Liam Neeson in the movie thriller, Marlowe, which is currently filming in Ireland and Spain. Melchior and Arnaud will play the brother and sister, Lynn and Nico Peterson. The movie follows private detective Philip Marlowe (Neeson), who is hired to find the ex-lover of a glamorous heiress. It looks like an open and shut case, but Marlowe soon finds himself in the underbelly of Hollywood’s film industry and unwittingly drawn into the crossfire of a legendary Hollywood actress and her subversive, ambitious daughter. Also starring are Diana Kruger, Jessica Lange, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Alan Cumming, Danny Huston, Ian Hart and Colm Meaney. William Monahan’s script is based on the novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde, by John Banville, with Oscar winner Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) aboard to direct.
In case you're still leery of watching a movie in theatres, Daniel Craig's No Time To Die has been given an official Blu-Ray release date of December 21st, which is just in time for the holidays. The Blu-Ray will include several Bond Special Features, including director Baillie Walsh’s documentary Being James Bond: The Daniel Craig Story (but only on the 4K UHD version).
A trailer was released for Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley, a noir psychological thriller starring Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett, which follows a charming but down-on-his-luck man (Cooper). After ingratiating himself with a clairvoyant (played by Toni Collette) and her mentalist husband (played by David Strathairn), he learns new grifting skills that grant him a ticket to mingle with the ultra-wealthy of 1940s New York. This puts him in conflict with a mysterious psychiatrist played by Cate Blanchett and a dangerous tycoon played by Richard Jenkins, all while a virtuous young woman named Molly (Rooney Mara) is at his side.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
An adaptation of Caitlin Rother’s true-crime book, Death On Ocean Boulevard: The Coronado Mansion, is in the works as a scripted limited series. Published by Kensington in April 2021, Death On Ocean Boulevard chronicles the harrowing story of Rebecca Zahau, who was found dead on the morning of July 13, 2011, at the historic Spreckels Mansion, a lavish beachfront property owned by her boyfriend, a powerful pharmaceutical tycoon. When authorities arrived, they found the cryptic message SHE SAVED HIM CAN YOU SAVE HER scrawled on a door near the victim. Was this a suicide note, or a killer’s taunt? Rebecca’s death came just two days after her boyfriend’s son took a devastating fall while in Rebecca’s care. Authorities deemed Rebecca’s death a suicide resulting from her guilt, but her family insists she was murdered. But who would stage a suicide or a murder in such a bizarre, elaborate way?
The serial killer novel, Dog Rose Dirt, from writer Jen Williams is to be adapted as a drama series by Gaumont UK. The psychological thriller, published earlier this year, follows a young woman whose dead mother’s secret past comes to light through a series of letters to a serial killer.
Alex Wolff has signed on to star opposite the previously announced Kiersey Clemons in Sophie Kargman’s feature directorial debut, Susie Searches. The project is based on Kargman's 2020 short film of the same name, in which she starred alongside Delon de Metz, Sam Lerner, Gabriel Notarangelo, and Alison Rich. The darkly comic thriller follows Susie (Clemons), an awkward college student who seizes the opportunity to bolster her popularity—and her overlooked true-crime podcast—by solving the disappearance of a classmate. But as her investigation proceeds, we realize that the truth and Susie aren’t at all what they seem. Wolff will play Jesse, the charismatic college kid whose disappearance sparks Susie’s investigation.
USA Network’s The Sinner, led by Bill Pullman as Det. Harry Ambrose, will air its final episode on Dec. 1, after the network announced the show's cancellation. Along with Pullman, Season 4 stars Frances Fisher, Alice Kremelberg, Neal Huff, Cindy Cheung, Ronin Wong, Jessica Hecht, and Michael Mosley. In Season 4, still reeling from the trauma of a previous case a year ago, the now-retired Harry Ambrose (Pullman) travels to Hanover Island in northern Maine for a recuperative getaway with his partner, Sonya (Hecht). When an unexpected tragedy occurs involving the daughter of a prominent island family, Ambrose is recruited to help the investigation, only to be thrown into a mystery of mounting paranoia that will turn this sleepy tourist island, and Ambrose’s life, upside down.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
NPR's Book of the Day podcast featured two thrillers, including astronaut Chris Hadfield speaking about his novel, The Apollo Murders, with former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro; and in a rebroadcast from 2015, Robert Siegel chatted with author Anthony Horowitz about his James Bond novel, Trigger Mortis, and what it's like giving a classic a 21st century twist.
Read or Dead's Katie and Nusrah discussed read-a-likes for some favorite and popular authors and recommended contemporary works similar to them to make your holiday shopping easier.
Over at the Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast, the second part of the mystery short story, "Harvey and the Redhead," written by Debra H. Goldstein and read by actors Ariel Linn and Sean Hopper, is up. You can listen to Part 1 here.
Speaking of Mysteries chatted with Abir Mukherjee about The Shadows of Men, the fifth installment in Mukherjee’s series set in post-World-War I Calcutta featuring Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Suran Banerjee. Banerjee has been accused of murdering a Hindu scholar in a same-as-it-ever-was story of political and religious tension.
Meet the Thriller Author spoke with Yasmin Angoe, a first-generation Ghanaian American who received the 2020 Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Emerging Writers of Color from Sisters in Crime, about Yasmin’s debut, Her Name is Knight; the long hard road to getting published and almost giving up; writing a high-octane thriller that embraces her Ghanaian roots, and a lot more.
Wrong Place Write Crime chatted with Dana Stabenow about her Kate Shugak series, her Liam Campbell books, and a lot about Alaska. Plus Lance Wright from Down & Out Books was on hand to profile some new releases, and there were additional book recommendations from Sebastien Fitzek, Rebecca Rosenberg, Matt FitzSimmons, and William Kent Krueger.
My Favorite Detective Stories host, John Hoda, interviewed Colin Conway, the author of The Cozy Up series which pushes the envelope of the cozy genre. Conway is also the creator of The 509 Crime Stories, a series of novels set in Eastern Washington with revolving lead characters, and co-authored The Charlie-316 political thriller series.
All About Agatha spoke with Macavity Award-winning novelist John Copenhaver about his new book, The Savage Kind, in which two lonely teenage girls in 1940s Washington, DC, discover they have a penchant for solving crimes—and an even greater desire to commit them.
John Copenhaver also appeared on the Unlikeable Female Characters podcast to talk about his novel, his favorite femme fatales, and the future of queer crime.
CrimeTime FM welcomed Heather Young to discuss her debut psychological thriller, The Lost Girls, and to talk about storytelling, domestic abuse, ancient lands, and family.
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