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
Higher Ground, the media company started by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, has extended its creative partnership with Netflix. As part of the deal, Higher Ground will have a multiyear first-look deal with Netflix for all of its film and TV projects. Among those are S.A. Cosby’s bestselling crime thriller, All the Sinners Bleed, which Higher Ground is developing with Amblin Entertainment; and Dyersville, a highly sought after Chicago-set crime thriller inspired by real life events, directed by Grant Singer. Higher Ground is coming off a succession of critically acclaimed and award-winning film and TV productions, including the Will Forte crime drama series, Bodkin, which spent three weeks on the Netflix global Top 10 list.
Black Bear announced the supporting cast for its Matthew McConaughey film, The Rivals of Amziah King: Golden Globe nominee Kurt Russell (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Cole Sprouse (Lisa Frankenstein), Owen Teague (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), Scott Shepherd (Killers of the Flower Moon), Rob Morgan (Mudbound), Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Jake Horowitz (Bones and All) and newcomer Angelina LookingGlass. The plot is being kept under wraps, though the project is described as a character-focused crime thriller set against the backdrop of rural Oklahoma. The feature is the second from writer-director Andrew Patterson on the heels of The Vast of Night, a sci-fi mystery distributed by Amazon that won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature in its Slamdance debut before going on to win Breakthrough Director at the Gotham Awards.
TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN
USA Network handed a series order to The Rainmaker, based on John Grisham’s best-selling novel, to be written and executive produced by Code Black creator Michael Seitzman. The official logline for the series is as follows: "Fresh out of law school, Rudy Baylor goes head-to-head with courtroom lion Leo Drummond as well as his law school girlfriend. Rudy, along with his boss and her disheveled paralegal, uncover two connected conspiracies surrounding the mysterious death of their client’s son." Grisham’s novel was published in 1995 and subsequently adapted into a 1997 action movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Matt Damon, Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, Claire Danes, and Jon Voight.
Amazon MGM Studios has launched development on The 500, a series adaptation of the novel from The Night Agent author, Matthew Quirk, with Andrew Sodroski (Manhunt) serving as showrunner, writer, and executive producer. The show follows a former con artist who is plucked from his Harvard Law School classroom to become an associate at Washington’s most high-powered consulting firm. Quickly pulled into a seductive, dangerous web of power and corruption, he struggles to find his way out. Published by Little, Brown and Company in 2014, The 500 marked the debut novel from Quirk, as well as the first in his Mike Ford series.
MGM+ has given an eight-episode series order to The Institute, a thriller based on the 2019 Stephen King novel. Ben Barnes (Shadow and Bone) and Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) are set to lead the drama from director/executive producer Jack Bender (Lost; Mr. Mercedes), writer/executive producer Benjamin Cavell (Justified; The Stand) and MGM+ Studios. The story follows twelve-year-old genius Luke Ellis, who is kidnapped and awakens at The Institute, a facility full of children who all got there the same way he did, and who are all possessed of unusual abilities. In a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson (Barnes) has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide. Parker will play Ms. Sigsby, the charming but iron-willed director of the Institute and a true believer in its awful mission, who is convinced history will come to see her as a hero.
Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) and Jo Joyner (The Wives) will lead an adaptation of Little Disasters, Sarah Vaughan’s novel of the same name, for Paramount+ UK & Ireland. The pair will play friends Jess and Liz in the six-part psychological thriller, which also stars Shelley Conn (Alex Rider) and Emily Taaffe (The Beast Must Die). The four actresses play four friends who were thrown together while expectant mothers with little in common apart from their due dates. "When Jess takes her baby daughter to hospital with a head injury she can’t explain, close friend and on-duty A&E doctor Liz is forced to make the excruciating decision as to whether to call social services on her friend. The decision sets of a chain of events that show how a moment can fracture and nearly destroy families and friendships."
The book When the Night Comes Falling by Howard Blum, which tells the inside story of the mysterious murders of the four University of Idaho students in 2022, is being developed as a scripted series. Village Roadshow Television is working up the adaptation of the book, which is set to be published by HarperCollins on June 25. Bryan Christopher Kohberger has been charged with four counts of murder after Kaylee Concalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin were found stabbed to death in their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho. Blum has been covering the case from the start and the series will see him go behind the scenes of the police manhunt that uncovered not only the suspected killer, but also larger questions connected to the tragedy.
In a new five-part documentary series, iconic Poirot actor David Suchet will replicate an international expedition that crime writer Agatha Christie took in the 1920s. In Travels with Agatha with Sir David Suchet, the actor will retrace Christie’s journey, which spanned former British Empire territories Canada, Hawaii, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia as part of a trade mission. Each episode will feature one of the five countries, with filming set to begin this summer toward a release date sometime around the end of the year. Suchet noted, "Having spent a quarter of a century personifying Agatha Christie’s iconic character of Hercule Poirot, I now feel so honoured to embark upon a journey around the world, as myself — in the footsteps of possibly the greatest crime writer of all times...I feel that she will be sitting on my shoulders at every moment urging me on to share her passion for knowledge, travel, archeology, and of course, mystery."
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
The Spybrary Spy Book Podcast welcomed Merle Nygate for a deep dive into her latest espionage novel, Honour Among Spies, the highly anticipated sequel to The Righteous Spy.
Crime Time FM host, Victoria Selman, is joined by authors Melanie Golding (Little Darlings) and Jim Hewitt (The Perfect Village), who use folklore as inspiration for their novels.
The latest episode of the MysteryRats Maze podcast featured the first chapter of Murder at the Oasis by David S. Pederson, as read by actor Sean Hopper.
The Pick Your Poison podcast investigated how the lack of smell might kill you and the lethal poison that routinely kills rescuers, yet is made in your body.
Comments