It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news, which is a little on the light side due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.:
THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES
The directing team known as Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez and Chad Villella) will helm the reboot of Escape From New York for 20th Century Studios. Original filmmaker, John Carpenter, will serve as executive producer of the project. The 1981 film was set in the then-near-future world of 1997 in a crime-ridden United States, which has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into the country's sole maximum-security prison. Air Force One is hijacked by anti-government insurgents who deliberately crash it into the walled borough. Ex-soldier and current federal prisoner, Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), is given just 24 hours to go in and rescue the President of the United States, after which, if successful, he will be pardoned. The film also starred Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton.
Steven Spielberg has found his Frank Bullitt, according to Deadline. Bradley Cooper has closed a deal to play the no-nonsense San Francisco cop in the new original Bullitt story centered on the classic character famously played by Steven McQueen in the 1968 thriller. Cooper will also produce the movie along with Spielberg and his producing partner, Kristie Macosko Krieger (marking their second collaboration after Maestro), with Josh Singer on board to pen the script. Steve McQueen’s son, Chad, and granddaughter, Molly McQueen, will exec produce the new movie. Sources are adamant this is not a remake of the original film but a new idea centered on the character. In the original film, Frank Bullitt is on the hunt for the mob kingpin that killed his witness. Considered one of McQueen’s more iconic roles, the film delivers one of the most famous car-chase scenes in cinema history.
Christian Gudegast (Den of Thieves) has been hired to direct the thriller, Crown Vic, for MadRiver Pictures. Crown Vic, which is based real events, is described as a "too-insane-to-be-true crime story" set in the early 1980s San Fernando Valley — a world where L.A. cops, mythologized by TV shows from Dragnet to CHiPs, were rock stars who operated with unchecked power. Its protagonists are Richard Ford and Robert Von Villas, two Vietnam War heroes turned superstar LAPD cops, who parlayed their positions to get rich, while cozying up to Hollywood’s biggest TV stars. The duo went on to build an underground criminal operation as thieves, gun runners, and murderers for hire, until their unwilling business partner risked everything to bring them down. Alec Ziff (Narcos: Mexico) conceived the original story with Gudegast and is penning the screenplay.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
ABC has reversed course on the drama series, Avalon, opting not to move forward with the show despite giving it a straight-to-series order in February. Avalon hailed from David E. Kelley and executive producer Michael Connelly, with the show based on a short story Connelly wrote. Per the official logline, the show takes place in the main city of Avalon on Catalina Island, where LA Sheriff Department Detective Nicole "Nic" Searcy (Neve Campbell) heads up a small office. Catalina has a local population that serves more than 1 million tourists a year, and each day when the ferries arrive, hundreds of potential new stories enter the island. Detective Searcy is pulled into a career-defining mystery that will challenge everything she knows about herself and the island. A+E Studios is said to still be bullish about the project and are weighing options on how to proceed.
The BBC and Amazon Freevee have commissioned Boat Story, a six-part thriller written by Harry and Jack Williams and produced by award-winning All3Media and Two Brothers Pictures (The Tourist, The Missing, Fleabag). Boat Story will premiere in the UK on BBC One and iPlayer, and in the US on Amazon Freevee. When two hard-up strangers, Janet (Daisy Haggard) and Samuel (Paterson Joseph), stumble across a haul of cocaine on a shipwrecked boat, they can’t believe their luck. After agreeing to sell it and split the cash, they quickly find themselves entangled with police, masked hitmen, and a sharp-suited gangster known only as "The Tailor" (Tcheky Karyo). The project is described as having "off-beat humour [that] contrasts with high-octane action sequences against the spectacular backdrop of the beautiful, windswept Yorkshire coastline."
Amazon Prime Video’s conspiracy thriller drama series, Hunters, created by David Weil and executive produced by Jordan Peele, will end after the upcoming second season. The first season followed a diverse band of Nazi hunters living in 1977 New York City. The Hunters, as they’re known, have discovered that hundreds of high-ranking Nazi officials are living among us and conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the United States. Season 2, to be focused on a worldwide search for Adolph Hitler (played by German actor Udo Kier), will begin streaming on January 13. Al Pacino, Logan Lerman and Jerrika Hinton star in Hunters, along with Josh Radnor, Kate Mulvany, Tiffany Boone, Greg Austin, Louis Ozawa, Carol Kane, Saul Rubinek, Dylan Baker, and Lena Olin. In addition to Kier, Oscar nominee Jennifer Jason Leigh has joined Season 2, along with Emily Rudd and Tommy Martinez, who recur.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
The All About Agatha podcast discussed Marple: Twelve New Mysteries, an anthology of short stories published this fall.
Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Elly Griffith to talk about her newly published crime fiction novel, Bleeding Heart Yard. The story is set around a high school reunion where London police officer, Cassie Fitzherbert, has to determine if she's experiencing buried memories of having killed someone years ago.
On Crime Time FM, Georgina Clarke chatted with Jenna Gordon about her new historical crime novel, The Dazzle of the Light; the post WWI landscape in 1920; the Forty Thieves; historical accuracy; reflecting on the present through the past - the role of women, class & inequality; dressmaking; and Halloween cocktails.
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