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
Filmmaker Wes Miller (A Day to Die) is taking on the legal thriller, Wildcards, as his next feature. The cast stars Leon Preston Robinson (usually credited simply as Leon), Elise Neal (All of Us), Aries Spears (Mad TV), and Stakiah Lynn Washington (Angel City) in lead roles, joined by Crew Morrow, Courtney Grace, Samantha Walkes, and Robert Catrini. Wildcards follows a jury deliberating the case of Theodore Sterling (Morrow), a privileged young man accused of the sexual assault of a 20-something African-American woman (Washington). The prosecution is led by Assistant State Attorney James Jones (Spears), an overworked yet determined prosecutor, who faces off against Greg Sims (Leon), a veteran defense attorney with an unbroken 25-year winning streak. As the jury weighs the evidence, their contrasting backgrounds and beliefs ignite fierce debates, amplifying the tension inside the deliberation room. Meanwhile, the emergence of a Wildcard, an enigmatic witness claiming to know the truth about the night in question, throws the case into turmoil.
TELEVISION/STREAMING
The Crown producer Left Bank Pictures has landed on its next royal project, turning its attention to The Lady, an ITV and BritBox International drama about Jane Andrews, the Duchess of York’s former aide and dresser who was convicted of murder. Moving amongst the highest social circles in Britain, she managed to secure a place in the upper-classes, only to lose her job with the Duchess after nine years of service prior to her conviction for murdering her husband, Thomas Cressman, in 2001. The project will begin filming during the early part of 2025 with news of casting and key production personnel announced closer to that date.
ITV has released the first trailer from the upcoming James Norton thriller, Playing Nice. The four-part series, to be released in January 2025, is based on the best-selling novel by British thriller author JP Delaney and is set against a sweeping Cornish landscape. Two couples discover that their toddlers were switched at birth in a hospital mix-up, and face a horrifying dilemma: do they keep the sons they have raised and loved, or reclaim their biological children? (HT to The Killing Times)
ABC is developing Devil’s Ranch, a one-hour military procedural from Will Trent's Rebecca Murga. Heidi Cole McAdams (Death and Other Details) is set as showrunner. The drama follows a group of ex-military personnel who operate a ranch on the Texas-Mexico border by day and conduct various missions across the globe by night.
ABC's hit procedural, The Rookie, may spawn a second spinoff series, and unlike the first one, it would stay in the cop show arena. The network, Lionsgate Television, and 20th Television are in early development on the offshoot, written by The Rookie creator, Alexi Hawley. Set in Washington state, the potential spinoff follows a male cop who is stepping into a new phase of life in his second act. It keeps the major midlife change concept of the Los Angeles-set original series, which started off with Nathan Fillion's John Nolan switching careers to become the oldest rookie in the LAPD.
Mark Eydelshteyn (Anora) will make his American TV debut as the male lead in Season 2 of Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Created by Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane, Season 1 of Mr. and Mrs. Smith followed two lonely strangers (Glover, Maya Erskine) who have to pose as a married couple as they both begin new careers as spies, taking on new aliases, Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Smith. Now hitched, John and Jane navigate a high-risk mission every week while also facing a new relationship milestone. The Season 1 finale, which Sloane described as a "nod to a’ 70s cinema cliffhanger," involved John and Jane getting into a gunfight, leaving it unclear whether the two survive. When asked in a Deadline interview whether Mr. & Mrs. Smith may be taking the anthology series route with a different story and different characters each season in the vein of Fargo, which Sloane had worked on, she responded cryptically, "maybe."
Amazon Prime Video debuted a Reacher Season 3 trailer and announced a premiere date of Thursday, February 20, 2025. The third season is based on Lee Child's novel, Persuader.
PODCASTS/RADIO
On Crime Time FM, Paul Burke chatted with Chris McGinley about his new historical thriller, Once These Hills.
Meet the Thriller Author welcomed bestselling author and former prosecutor in the L.A. District Attorney’s office, Marcia Clark, to talk about her new book, Trial by Ambush.
A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the Christmas mystery short story, "Gnomes For the Holidays," by Margaret Hamilton, read by actor Donna Beavers.
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