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
Amazon MGM Studios and Scott Stuber have acquired The Girl in the Lake, a proposal for an adult mystery thriller novel by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver. Oliver will write the script for a film that will be developed for United Artists. Scarlett Johansson is eyeing this to star in as the title character and will also co-produce. The logline is being kept under wraps but it's being described as "What Lies Beneath meets The Sixth Sense."
Reacher star Alan Ritchson has found his next action project with Runner, a movie about a high-end courier who has three hours to transport an organ to save a seven-year-old girl in need of an immediate transplant. The seemingly simple mission turns deadly when the leader of a notorious crime syndicate becomes hell-bent on claiming the organ.
Brandon Sklenar (It Ends With Us) is set to join Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried in the Lionsgate adaptation of the psychological thriller, The Housemaid, with Paul Feig directing from Rebecca Sonnenshine's adaptation of Freida McFadden’s novel. In the film, Sweeney will play Millie, a struggling woman who is relieved to get a fresh start as a housemaid to Nina (Seyfried) and Andrew (Sklenar), an upscale, wealthy couple. She soon learns that the family’s secrets are far more dangerous than her own. The novel has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year and on the Amazon bestseller list for 98 weeks and counting.
Monica Barbaro has boarded Crime 101, Bart Layton’s adaptation of the Don Winslow novella for Amazon MGM Studios, in an as-yet-to-be-revealed role. Other cast members include Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, and Halle Berry. While official plot details for Crime 101 haven’t been disclosed, the novella follows veteran jewel thief Davis as he plans a high-stakes diamond heist along the Pacific Coast Highway, getting into a cat-and-mouse chase with a dedicated LAPD detective named Lou Lubesnick after executing what he hopes will be his final score before disappearing for good.
In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of the first John Wick movie, Lionsgate has several festivities planned including special events, anniversary screenings, new experiences, and new collectible merchandise, culminating in the release of Ballerina: From the World of John Wick next year on June 6. The original film starring Keanu Reeves, directed by Chad Stahelski, and written by Derek Kolstad, flew under the radar at the box office and grossed a relatively paltry $86M worldwide, only to explode on home entertainment and launch a mega franchise across four films for Lionsgate grossing $1.02 billion to date.
Veteran documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim (Ren Faire) is pivoting to fiction with his next project, Primetime, which will be financed and produced by A24, with Robert Pattinson among the producers. While not much is known about the film’s genre or plot, it’s said to follow a journalist who takes on an underworld of crime and changes television forever. The project allegedly takes inspiration from To Catch a Predator, the NBC program put on as part of Dateline, as well as its host, Chris Hansen. The early indications are that Pattinson is also attached to star.
Catherine Corcoran (Terrifier) and Alex Mandel (Howie Mandel Does Stuff) have joined Bryce Hirschberg's latest film, the thriller, Jackalope. Writer-director Hirschberg, known for the 2017 film Counterfeiters and his appearance on the Netflix dating show, Too Hot to Handle, is also starring. He made the film alongside creative partner David Klassen (Deadpool 2), who co-wrote and serves as producer and director of photography. The plot follows two brothers, whose quiet weekend retreat unravels into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the arrival of a hauntingly enigmatic woman who causes them to question how well they really know each other and themselves.
TELEVISION/STREAMING
Bruna Papandrea's Made Up Stories has optioned Darling Girls by Sally Hepsworth and has begun work on a TV adaptation. The crime novel, which became an instant bestseller in the U.S. and Hepworth’s native Australia upon release this year, is billed as "a page-turning thriller about sisterhood, secrets and murder." The plot follows Jessica, Norah, and Alicia, who return to the idyllic farming estate where they were raised by a loving foster mother—when a body is discovered under the house. Though always told they were lucky to have gotten a second chance at a happy family life after their own family tragedies, the sisters realize their childhood wasn’t the fairytale everyone thought it was.
CBS has renewed Matlock, starring Kathy Bates, for a second season after only three episodes into its freshman year. Matlock premiered on September 22 with a sneak peak episode that drew the biggest audience for a non-post-Super Bowl series premiere in five and a half years. The show stars Bates as Madeline "Matty" Matlock, a brilliant septuagenarian who achieved success in her younger years and decides to rejoin the work force at a prestigious law firm where she uses her unassuming demeanor and wily tactics to win cases, all while investigating a deeply personal secret of her own. Skye P. Marshall, Jason Ritter, David Del Rio, and Leah Lewis also star.
Cineflix scored new international deals for the cozy crime series, Whitstable Pearl. Based on the popular Julie Wassmer novels, the series stars Kerry Godliman (After Life) as Pearl Nolan. She divides her time between serving up seafood in her restaurant in the English seaside town of the title, and solving the crimes and murder brought in by the tide. Howard Charles (The Musketeers) plays a cop, Mike McGuire, and her on/off rival and love interest. The series is from Marcella producer Buccaneer and for AMC Networks’ Acorn TV, which has greenlit three seasons thus far.
An Indian remake of the U.S. drama, Monk, is in production via Disney+ Hotstar. It marks the first adaptation of the series, about a detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder, in South Asia. The original series ran on USA Network from 2002 – 2009 and spawned a movie that played on Peacock last year. It followed Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) and his assistants, Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram) and Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard), and their work with the San Francisco Police Department on unconventional cases.
Tommie Earl Jenkins has joined the cast of the USA Network drama series, The Rainmaker, based on the John Grisham novel. The series follows Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) who, fresh out of law school, goes head-to-head with courtroom lion Leo Drummond (John Slattery) and his law school girlfriend Sarah Plankmore (Madison Iseman). Rudy, along with his boss (Lana Parrilla) and her disheveled paralegal, uncover two connected conspiracies surrounding the mysterious death of their client’s son. Jenkins will play Prince Thomas, owner of Yogi’s Bar where Rudy works as a bartender when we first meet him, who's a mysterious character with motives as murky as his loyalties.
PODCASTS/RADIO
On the Spybrary Spy Podcast, Nick Harkaway discussed his new novel, Karla's Choice and continuing his father John le Carré's George Smiley series.
On Crime Time FM, I S Berry, the only female former CIA field agent writing spy fiction, chatted with Paul Burke about her espionage thriller, The Peacock and the Sparrow, an Edgar First Novel, Barry, and ITW Award Winner.
The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke with BBC broadcaster-turned-crime writer, Louise Minchin, about her debut, Isolation Island, and discussed a one-hundred-year-old frozen foot found on Mount Everest.
Sharon Healy-Yang was the latest guest on the Murder We Write podcast, talking to host Carol Goodman Kaufman about Healy-Yang's latest Jessica Minton Mystery, Shadows of a Dark Past.
On Tipping My Fedora, Sergio Angelini welcomed writer and filmmaker, Liam Dunn, as they explored the late William Friedkin's 1985 dark and dazzling neo-noir, To Live and Die in LA.
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