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
WWE Superstar, Liv Morgan, will make her film debut in the darkly comic thriller, The Kill Room. She joins an ensemble that also includes the previously announced Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Manganiello, Maya Hawke, Debi Mazar, Larry Pine, Dree Hemingway, and Leah McSweeney. The film centers on hitman Reggie (Manganiello), his boss (Jackson), an art dealer (Thurman), and their money laundering scheme that accidentally turns the hitman into an overnight Avant-Garde sensation, forcing the dealer to play the art world against the underworld. Morgan will play an art purist who bemoans the vapidness of art dealers.
Ryan Phillippe (MacGruber), Mireille Enos (Hanna), Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks), and Taryn Manning (Orange Is the New Black) are the latest additions to Michelle Danner’s courtroom drama, Miranda’s Victim. They join an ensemble led by Abigail Breslin, Luke Wilson, Andy Garcia, and Donald Sutherland. The film will tell the true story of Trish Weir (Breslin), who in 1963 was kidnapped and brutally raped by Ernesto Miranda. Committed to putting her assailant in prison, Trish’s life is destroyed by America’s legal system as she triggers a law that transforms the nation. Her case notably results in the establishment of the Miranda rights afforded to criminal suspects taken in police custody, to ensure the admissibility of statements made during interrogation, as part of subsequent criminal proceedings. Phillippe will play ACLU lawyer Flynn, who successfully argues in front of the Supreme Court to get the landmark ruling for the Miranda Rights, with MacLachlan as Chief Justice Warren, who announces the ruling. Enos will portray Trish’s mother Zeola, who struggles to support her daughter while processing her own trauma, with Manning as Miranda’s wife Twila, whose testimony is pivotal in the case.
Erin Moriarty (The Boys), Jai Courtney (Suicide Squad), Dina Shihabi (Archive 81), and Ryan Corr (House of the Dragon) have signed on to star in Catching Dust, an upcoming Texas noir marking the feature debut of writer-director Stuart Gatt. The drama is set in the isolation of Texas’s Big Bend, where a lone trailer on an abandoned commune has become a hideout for Geena (Moriarty), at the behest of her criminal husband, Clyde (Courtney). Geena’s lust for life and desire for interaction with the outside world are quashed by Clyde’s insistence they remain hidden from the law and his former cohorts looking to settle old scores. Exhausted by Clyde’s controlling ways, Geena decides to leave, but then a trailer arrives carrying Amaya (Shihabi) and Andy (Corr), a couple from New York seeking a respite from the city. Ignoring the risks their presence will bring, Geena convinces Clyde to let them stay—a decision that will have dangerous consequences for them all.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Fox is developing Felonious Monk, a one-hour drama based on William Kotzwinkle’s novel, from writer Michael Brandon Guercio (Treadstone) and Fox Entertainment. Felonious Monk is about a disgraced cop with anger issues-turned-monk who returns to his hometown to take care of his dead uncle’s outstanding business debts. But when he suspects foul play, he’s forced to abandon his serene monastery life in order to solve his uncle’s murder and other homicide cases.
Erin Young’s recently published crime thriller, The Fields, is being adapted for the small screen, with Kate Brooke attached as writer/showrunner (although no network home was yet announced). Young is the pseudonym of bestselling historical novelist, Robyn Young, and The Fields is her crime thriller debut. The story centers on Sergeant Riley Fisher, newly promoted to head of investigations for the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office, who investigates the death of a young woman found in an Iowa cornfield on one of the few family farms still managing to compete with the giants of Big Agriculture. The murder becomes deeply personal when Riley discovers the victim was a childhood friend connected to a dark past she thought she’d left behind. The investigation grows more complicated as more victims are found, and Riley soon discovers implications far beyond her Midwest town.
Magnum P.I. is looking to join an elite group of popular broadcast series that overcame shocking cancellations to continue their runs. Deadline reported talks are underway for NBC and/or USA Network to potentially carry the series starring Jay Hernandez. One scenario would be for new episodes to air on NBC while USA would run previous seasons of the action drama, a reboot of the 1980s series that starred Tom Selleck. Immediately following CBS’s surprise May 12 cancellation of Magnum P.I. after four seasons, Universal Television, which co-produces the series with CBS Studios, sprang into action and started exploring potential new homes for the show.
MASTERPIECE Mystery! announced the 2022-2023 lineup of programming, which includes new seasons of returning popular shows and a few newcomers. Endeavour returns Sunday, June 19 with the first of three all-new mysteries featuring the cerebral, solitary hero, Endeavour Morse (Shaun Evans); Grantchester Season 7 returns on July 10, with Tom Brittney as Reverend Will Davenport and Robson Green as his crime-solving partner, DI Geordie Keating; Season 2 of the darkly comic Scottish thriller Guilt starring Mark Bonar returns August 8; three all-new episodes of Van der Valk, with Marc Warren starring as maverick Dutch detective, Piet Van der Valk, returns September 25; and the Victorian London-set Miss Scarlet and The Duke returns for Season 2 on October 16 with Kate Phillips and Stuart Martin. The new shows are Magpie Murders, based on the book by Anthony Horowitz, and Annika, both of which premiere as a double-header on October 16. The first stars Lesley Manville and Timothy McMullan, while the latter features Nicola Walker as Scottish DI Annika Strandhed. PBS released a trailer for the lineup you can watch here.
U.K. broadcaster ITV has commissioned Six Four, a four-part crime thriller inspired by the bestselling novel by Hideo Yokoyama. Set primarily in Glasgow, the drama follows the O’Neills, police detective Chris and his wife, former undercover officer Michelle, whose teenage daughter goes missing. Meanwhile, the daughter of the justice minister is suddenly kidnapped, just as the minister is on the cusp of achieving an election victory. The cast is led by Kevin McKidd (Grey’s Anatomy) and Vinette Robinson (BIFA winner for Boiling Point) and also includes Richard Coyle (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore), James Cosmo (The Bay), Alex Ferns (The Irregulars), Iona Anderson (The Long Call), Andrew O’Neill, and Nilani Chetty.
Amanda Peet has joined the cast of Fatal Attraction, Paramount+’s series reimagining of the classic 1980s psychosexual thriller film. She joins previously announced series leads Lizzy Caplan and Joshua Jackson. Written by Alexandra Cunningham from a story she co-wrote with Kevin J. Hynes, the series explores the timeless themes of marriage and infidelity through the lens of modern attitudes towards strong women, personality disorders, and coercive control. Peet will play Beth Gallagher, a loyal wife, loving mother, and successful small business owner whose world unravels when her husband Dan’s (Jackson) indiscretion threatens to destroy their life together. Caplan plays Alex Forrest.
Miguel Gomez will not be returning to FBI: Most Wanted when the crime drama series is back for a fourth season next fall. The recent Season 3 finale provided a suitable ending to the arc of Gomez's Special Agent Ivan Ortiz, a former LAPD Gang Unit officer born and raised in Los Angeles who, after a stint with the FBI’s counter-terror unit in Washington, DC, joined the team that tracks down the country’s most wanted fugitives. In the finale, which aired last week, Ortiz returned to Los Angeles to take care of his ailing father. FBI: Most Wanted underwent a major casting change this season when original lead Julian McMahon exited and was succeeded by Dylan McDermott playing a new character. McDermott will be back for Season 4, joined by the rest of the remaining series regular cast members, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Roxy Sternberg, and Alexa Davalos.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
Meet the Thriller Author shared a replay of an interview with John Hindmarsh, who passed away on Sunday, May 29th. John was the author of the Mark Midway futuristic spy series and the bestselling Jack Foster space opera series (with the fifth and final installment due out in September).
On Wrong Place, Write Crime, author Greg Levin talked about his dark novels (tinged with humor), including The Exit Man, Sick to Death, and In Wolves Clothing.
My Favorite Detective Stories welcomed Andy Straka, whose works include the Shamus Award-winning Frank Pavlicek series and his recently released Split City, the first in a new amateur sleuth series.
Writers Detective Bureau host, Detective Adam Richardson, discussed how 9-1-1 calls get dispatched over the police radio; what would happen if the morgue becomes unusable; and how detectives worked with the phone company on investigations in the 1950s and 60s.
Joachim B. Schmidt chatted with Crime Time FM's Paul Burke about his new novel, Kalmann, set in Iceland and translated from the German by Jamie Lee Searle.
On the Red Hot Chili Writers podcast, thriller writer Stephanie Merritt discussed her latest novel, Storm, while her alter ego S.J. Parris talked us through the life of her historical crime series protagonist, Giordano Bruno, a philosopher and cosmologist.
The All About Agatha podcast interviewed Carla Valentine, author of Murder Isn't Easy: The Forensics of Agatha Christie. Carla Valentine is a forensic pathologist and a "massive" Agatha Christie fan.
The latest episode of the Ellery Queen Magazine podcast featured Rob Osler reading his 2022 Robert L. Fish Memorial Award winning story “Analogue,” from the January/February 2021 issue.
On the latest Queer Writers of Crime, Dharma Kelleher, Bud Gundy, Anthony Bidulka, and Meredith Doench offered up some suggested books for readers.
On Read or Dead, Katie and Nusrah talked about mystery series you can dive into.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club also shared three books to get you started for summer reading.
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