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
Filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, is re-teaming with Edward Neumeier, the screenwriter behind Verhoeven’s classic genre movies Robocop and Starship Troopers, on a political thriller titled Young Sinner. Verhoeven said the project would be "an innovative version of movies like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct...and it would not be adding all kinds of digital elements." Young Sinner is set in Washington, D.C. and follows a young staffer, who works for a powerful Senator, who gets drawn into a web of international intrigue and danger.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Yellowstone creator, Taylor Sheridan, is developing the mob drama, Kansas City, for Paramount with Sylvester Stallone set to star, marking the actor's first regular series TV role in his 50-year career. Sheridan will write and produce the series with Terence Winter, who will serve as showrunner. The story, set in the present day, follows legendary New York City mobster Sal (Stallone), who is faced with the task of re-establishing his Italian mafia family in the modernized, straight-shooting town of Kansas City, Missouri. There, Sal encounters surprising and unsuspecting characters who follow him along his unconventional path to power.
Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) is set to star in a series adaptation of Dean Koontz’s thriller books based on his "Nameless" character. Koontz’s series of 12 short thrillers, which were first published in 2019 as Amazon Original Stories, follow Nameless, a man with amnesia who knows only the mission—assigned by a shadowy agency—and travels the country turning predators into prey and dispensing justice when the law fails. As he moves from town to town, the pain of his past can’t hold him back, until dark and splintered visions lead him toward his greatest test yet.
ABC is developing Only to Deceive, a contemporary TV series adaptation of Tasha Alexander’s bestselling novel And Only to Deceive. Although Alexander’s book, the first in the Lady Emily Mysteries, is set in Victorian England, the series adaptation, written by Paul Sciarrotta, is set in modern-day America. As Lady Emily Ashton, the toast of New York City’s high society, tries to make sense of her late husband’s mysterious death, she stumbles into a secret career as a private investigator alongside her polar opposite, Long Island ex-cop Colin Hargreaves.
Frank Langella has been tapped to lead the cast of The Fall of the House of Usher, Mike Flanagan’s eight-part limited series for Netflix based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe. Also starring are Carla Gugino, Mary McDonnell, Carl Lumbly, and Mark Hamill. Langella will play Roderick Usher, the towering patriarch of the Usher dynasty; McDonnell will play Roderick’s twin sister and the hidden hand of the Usher dynasty; Lumbly will take on Poe’s legendary investigator, C. Auguste Dupin; and Gugino and Hamill will portray yet-to-be disclosed characters. First published in 1839, Poe's story features themes of madness, family, isolation, and identity.
Marlon James, the Man Booker Prize-winning author behind A Brief History of Seven Killings, has landed a series order from HBO and the UK’s Channel 4 for Get Millie Black, a crime drama set in Jamaica. The project follows ex-Scotland Yard detective, Millie-Jean Black, who returns to Kingston to work missing persons and soon finds herself on a quest to save a sister who won’t be saved; to find a boy who can’t be found; and to solve a case that will blow her world apart and prove almost as tough to crack as Millie Black, herself.
The CW is developing a prequel series to Walker set in the 1880s, from Walker star, Jared Padalecki, and Walker series creator, Anna Fricke. Titled Walker: Independence, the prequel project centers on Abby Walker, an affluent Bostonian whose husband is murdered before her eyes while on their journey out West. On her quest for revenge, Abby crosses paths with Hoyt Rawlins, a lovable rogue in search of purpose. Abby and Hoyt’s journey takes them to Independence, Texas, where they encounter diverse, eclectic residents running from their own troubled pasts and chasing their dreams.
Also in development at the CW is Hipster Death Rattle, described as "a drama/satire with comedic elements." The one-hour series from CBS Studios—based on the novel of the same name by Richie Narvaez—is set in a historically Latino neighborhood that’s falling victim to aggressive gentrification. According to the show’s logline, "Someone is killing the ‘woke’ yet pretentious new hipsters. But who? And worse – do the locals even care? The victims were just hiking up rent anyway!'"
Camryn Manheim will be a series regular on NBC’s revival of Law & Order, playing a new character, Lt. Kate Dixon. Lt. Dixon is a successor to Lt. Anita Van Buren, played by S. Epatha Merkerson in Seasons 4-20 of the Emmy-winning series. (Merkerson is not available as she is a series regular on another Dick Wolf series, Chicago Med.) Manheim joins fellow new Law & Order main cast additions, Jeffrey Donovan, who plays an NYPD detective, and Hugh Dancy, who plays an Assistant District Attorney. Law & Order alum, Anthony Anderson, is also reprising his role as Detective Kevin Bernard, while Sam Waterston remains in negotiations to return as DA Jack McCoy.
Actor and musician, Eliot Sumner (No Time to Die), has been tapped for a recurring role opposite Andrew Scott and Johnny Flynn in Ripley, Showtime’s drama series based on Patricia Highsmith’s bestselling quintet of Tom Ripley novels. The series follows Tom Ripley (Scott), a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York until he's hired by a wealthy man to convince his vagabond son, Dickie Greenleaf (Flynn), who is living a comfortable, trust-funded life in Italy, to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud, and murder. Dakota Fanning also stars as Marge Sherwood, an American living in Italy who suspects darker motives underlie Tom’s affability. Sumner will play a friend of Dickie’s who becomes suspicious of Tom.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
Crime Writers of Color featured a discussion of host Robert Justice's new debut novel, They Can't Take Your Name, which pits three characters in a race against time to thwart a gross miscarriage of justice and a crooked detective.
Wrong Place, Write Crime host, Franz Zafiro, chatted with Kevin Tipple about his fiction and his review blog, Kevin's Corner.
S A Cosby spoke with Craig Sisterson on Crime Time FM about Cosby's novel, Razorblade Tears; winning the Crime Time FM Novel Award; being the "bard of broken men"; TV rights; and entertaining readers.
Sunday Times journalist and Spybrary contributor, Tim Shipman, chatted with author, Matthew Richardson. They discussed Matthew's spy novels, his writing style, and his literary influences, and paid tribute to the new generation of spy writers.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club spoke with Yasmin Angoe about her new book, Her Name Is Knight, which centers on Nena Knight, a highly trained assassin for The Tribe – a clandestine international organization dedicated to the protection and advancement of the peoples and countries of Africa around the world.
This week's episode of the Red Hot Chili Writers featured an interview with Stuart Turton, author of the mind-bending novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle; a quiz with Imran Mahmood about his adapted BBC show, You Don't Know Me; and a discussion of where the word "tomfoolery" comes from.
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