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
Phoenix Raei is joining Hugo Weaving as a lead in The Rooster, an Australian mystery drama film in which a small-town cop discovers the dead body of his best friend. The film, which has just completed principal photography in Victoria state, is directed by actor Mark Leonard Winter, making his debut as a feature director. Raei plays the cop who confronts Weaving’s volatile character, a forest-dwelling hermit who was the last person known to have seen his pal. Other cast include Helen Thomson, Rhys Mitchell, Bert La Bonte, John Waters, Camilla Ah Kin, Robert Menzies, and Deirdre Rubenstein.
Billy Magnussen is the latest addition to Netflix’s upcoming reboot of the Spy Kids film franchise, joining previously announced cast members Gina Rodriguez, Zachary Levi, Everly Carganilla, and Connor Esterson. The project will be headed by the original franchise’s creator and director Robert Rodriguez, who is also producing and writing alongside Racer Max. The yet-to-be-titled film will introduce a new family of spies to the four-film franchise that originally starred Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino, with Alexa PenaVega and Daryl Sabara as the kids. As the logline goes, after the children of the world’s top secret agents inadvertently help an evil Game Developer gain control of all technology through a computer virus, they must transform into spies themselves to save their parents and the planet.
John Wick: Chapter 4 won’t be in theaters until next spring, but the first footage was revealed at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday by star Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski. The screenplay was written by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch, and returning stars include Laurence Fishburne, Lance Riddick, and Ian McShane.
Bleecker Street today unveiled the trailer for its John Boyega thriller, Breaking (formerly titled 892), which is slated for release in theaters nationwide on August 26. The film from director Abi Damaris Corbin is based on the true story of Marine Veteran Brian Brown-Easley (Boyega), who finds himself financially desperate and running out of options after being denied support from Veterans Affairs. Subsequently, he enters a bank and takes several of its employees hostage, setting the stage for a tense confrontation with the police.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
David P. Davis’s ITV Studios-backed label, 5 Acts Productions, has optioned the TV rights to British author Clare Mackintosh's thriller, The Last Party, which will be published on August 4. The story follows DC Ffion Morgan as she investigates the murder of Rhys Lloyd, a homegrown hero who is found floating dead in the water on New Year’s Day, the morning after a party that brought together a feuding community. The murder leads Morgan to scrutinize neighbors, friends, and family as she attempts to solve a mystery in a town full of secrets.
CBS has given a pilot order to The Never Game, a drama series adaptation of Jeffery Deaver’s novel, starring and executive produced by Justin Hartley. The project quietly underwent a writer change in the spring, with Ben Winters replacing Michael Cooney, who had been attached when the pitch was sold last fall. The Never Game features Hartley as lone-wolf survivalist Colter Shaw, who roams the country as a "reward seeker," using his expert tracking skills to help private citizens and law enforcement to solve all manner of mysteries while contending with his own fractured family.
Fresh Off the Boat producer and writer, Eddie Huang, is developing a new one-hour drama series called Panda at Showtime. The series centers on the titular gifted delinquent who starts selling ecstasy in Orlando, Florida during the pressed pill boom of the late-90s, motivated by his mother’s challenge to "be the best of the stupid people." With the help of Jade, a cunning private school girl from the other side of town, they connect the hoods and take over the burgeoning drug trade in the Florida Breaks Rave Scene.
NBC has picked up the missing-persons procedural pilot, Found, as a series for the 2022-23 season. In any given year, more than 600,000 people are reported missing in the U.S., and more than half that number are people of color that the country seems to forget about. Public relations specialist Gabi Mosely (series star and producer Shanola Hampton) and her crisis management team now make sure there is always someone looking out for the forgotten missing people. But unbeknownst to anyone, this everyday hero is hiding a chilling secret of her own.
Adam Pally has joined the cast of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s untitled spy adventure for Netflix in a key recurring role. The series, from creator and showrunner Nick Santora, is about a father and daughter who realize their entire relationship has been a lie, after learning they’ve each been secretly working as CIA Operatives for years. Pally will play The Great Dane, a black market middleman who isn’t as goofy as he seems and knows how to manipulate and charm to get what he wants. Serving time in a Turkish prison, a team of CIA operatives help him escape so he can connect with Boro (Gabriel Luna), a criminal intent on building a nuke.
Edwin Hodge is officially the newest member of the Fugitive Task Force on CBS’s FBI: Most Wanted, following Miguel Gomez’s exit in June. He will make his debut as Ray Cannon this fall during the show’s fourth season, which kicks off on September 20. Ray Cannon transferred to Remy Scott’s (Dylan McDermott) team from the FBI’s Violent Crimes office in Albany. He started his career in New Orleans as a cop-turned-junior-detective, then graduated at the top of his class at Quantico last year, following in his retired FBI agent father’s footsteps.
MASTERPIECE on PBS released a first look trailer for Magpie Murders, written and adapted for TV by Anthony Horowitz. The miniseries airs in six parts beginning Sunday, October 16. Magpie Murders stars Lesley Manville as editor, Susan Ryeland, and Tim McMullan as 1950's private detective, Atticus Pünd.
Netflix has greenlit a third season of the true crime series, I Am A Killer, the show that interviews murderers on Death Row or those who are spending the majority of their lives behind bars. Sky Studios-backed Transistor Films has gained access to maximum security prisons across the U.S. for season three, exploring the crimes in question through exclusive interviews with the men and women that committed them. Coupled with contributor interviews, the subjects will once again recount the events that led them to murder, exploring their motivations and, ultimately, how they now view their crimes after time spent in some of the toughest prisons in the U.S. The six-parter will launch in late August.
Tru Valentino has been promoted to series regular for the upcoming fifth season of ABC's The Rookie, starring Nathan Fillion. Valentino’s Officer Aaron Thorsen is the newest rookie at the station and appeared in eleven episodes in Season 4.
Middle East and North Africa media and entertainment giant MBC Group has announced an Arabic-language remake of the hit Danish police procedural, The Killing. The original Copenhagen-set show, produced by Danish state broadcaster DR, sold to more than 120 territories and was nominated for multiple TV awards. The new version marks the first time a Nordic noir has been adapted for the Arabic market. Locally titled as Monataf Khater, the remake is set in Cairo.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring an excerpt from The Witch's Child by Susan Van Kirk, read by actor Kathie Chestnut Mollica.
The latest episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features Debbi Mack's interview with crime writer, Alice Bienia, as she discussed her background as a geologist and her Jorja Knight mystery series.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club discussed some interesting articles pertaining to the mystery genre, as well as new books by authors who have previously appeared on the podcast.
On Queer Writers of Crime, Justene featured a review of My Name is Jimmy, a crime novella set in post WWII Australia.
Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Jennifer Hillier to chat about her new suspense novel, Things We Do in the Dark, which centers on Paris Peralta, who's arrested for her husband’s murder but proclaims her innocence even though she’s found next to her husband’s body holding the murder weapon and covered in his blood.
The legendary author Dean Koontz is back on Meet the Thriller Author to talk about his latest thriller, The Big Dark Sky, which centers on a group of strangers, bound by a terrifying synchronicity, who become humankind’s hope of survival.
On Criminal Mischief, Dr. D.P. Lyle took a look at the use of familial/genealogical DNA to solve cases like the Golden State Killer.
My Favorite Detective Stories welcomed Sarah Stewart Taylor, author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D’arcy series.
On the latest Crime Time FM, four top Orion authors discussed their latest novels with Paul Burke as the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writers Festival got under way.
On the Red Hot Chili Writers, Luca Veste and Victoria Selman discussed their new crime thrillers, what "Scouse" actually means, and plagiarizing C.S. Lewis at the age of 7.
A recent episode of the NPR podcast 1A took a look at how Indigenous people are being represented in TV and the movies this summer, and how it took thirty years for Dark Winds to be adapted for television. The Tony Hillerman crime novel series revolves around the Navajo Nation and two tribal policemen trying to solve the murder of a Navajo woman.
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