In Reference to Murder

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Paramount Pictures has acquired the screen rights to Adrian McKinty’s novel, The Chain. The Chain tells the story of Rachel, who learns that her 11-year-old daughter has been kidnapped, and the only way to get her back is to kidnap another child. Her daughter will be released only when that next victim’s parents kidnap another child. If Rachel doesn’t kidnap another child, or if that child’s parents don’t kidnap a child, her daughter will be murdered. She is now part of The Chain, a terrifying and meticulous chain letter-like kidnapping scheme that turns parents from victims into criminals.

Lionsgate has acquired global film rights to Gerard de Villiers’ best-selling action-spy series, S.A.S. The project will be titled Malko and is a project for Michael Fassbender to star in and produce, with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Eric Warren Singer (American Hustle) writing the screenplay. With the deal, Lionsgate has secured the full rights to de Villier’s catalogue of best selling espionage thrillers, serialized through 200 books that have been translated into multiple languages and sold north of 120M copies worldwide. Fassbender will play the super spy-for-hire, Malko Linge, an Austrian nobleman and freelance CIA operative who spent his formative years in a special Nazi work camp for captured spies.

The Spanish box office hit, The Body (El Cuerpo), is set to get an English-language remake with Isaac Ezban directing. The thriller centers on a detective searching for the body of a femme fatale which has gone missing from a morgue.

Sean Penn's next directorial venture, Flag Day, is heading into production as it rounds out its cast; Penn will be joined onscreen by his daughter and son, Dylan and Hopper, along with Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Norbert Leo Butz, Dale Dickey, Eddie Marsan, Bailey Noble, and Katheryn Winnick. Tony-winning playwright Jez Butterworth (behind Broadway’s The Ferryman) penned the screenplay, which is based on Jennifer Vogel’s 2005 memoir, Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father's Counterfeit Life. The book tells the story of a daughter coming to terms with her perceptions of her criminal father, a bank robber and career counterfeiter who evaded arrest for six months.

Cary Elwes has joined the cast of Black Christmas, the Blumhouse Productions remake of the 1974 slasher cult classic for Universal Pictures. Elwes will play a main part in the film, but details of the role were not disclosed. The updated version of Black Christmas is set at Hawthorne College over the holidays when, one by one, sorority girls on campus are being killed by an unknown stalker. But the killer is about to discover that this generation’s young women aren’t willing to become hapless victims as they mount a fight to the finish.

Ice Cube is negotiating to team with Dave Bautista in The Killer’s Game, the Simon Kinberg and Rand Ravich-scripted adaptation of the Jay Bonansinga novel. Bautista plays an elite hitman named Joe Flood who learns he has a terminal disease. A devout Catholic, he won’t kill himself, and instead takes out a contract on himself and makes sure the woman he has fallen in love with is financially set. When Flood gets word he was misdiagnosed and is fine, his new mission is to protect his lover and try to call off the hit even though several assassins are now vying for the bounty, with Ice Cube playing the best of those assassins.

Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver) is joining I Care A Lot, the Black Bear Pictures thriller starring Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage. J Blakeson (The Disappearance Of Alice Creed) is directing from his own original screenplay. Oscar-nominee Pike will play Marla Grayson, a highly successful legal guardian with a knack for using the law to her benefit and her elderly clients’ detriment, living a life of luxury at their expense. But when her seemingly innocent next victim turns out to have dangerous secrets, Marla must use every ounce of her wit and cunning to stay alive.

Morena Baccarin is the latest to join the cast of the Tim Kirkby-directed action thriller, Waldo, starring Mel Gibson and Charlie Hunnam. The project is based on the novel, Last Looks, by Howard Michael Gould, and centers around a disgraced LAPD detective (Hunnam), who’s spent the past three years living off the grid. He’s reluctantly pulled back into his old life by a former lover in order to solve the murder of an eccentric celebrity’s wife. 

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The Television Critics Association’s 35th Annual TCA Awards nominations were announced last Wednesday. Up for Best Drama Series are the crime dramas Better Call Saul (AMC); The Good Fight (CBS All Access); and Killing Eve (BBC America). Best Movie or Miniseries also includes Escape at Dannemora (Showtime); Sharp Objects (HBO); and When They See Us (Netflix). Among the Best Achievement in a Drama Series nominees are Amy Adams for Sharp Objects (HBO); Patricia Arquette for Escape at Dannemora (Showtime); Christine Baranski for The Good Fight (CBS All Access); and Jodie Comer for Killing Eve (BBC America).

BET Networks has put into development Black Mambas, a one-hour drama from Rebel creator Amani Walker. Black Mambas follows the journey of four powerful women who are bikers. After growing tired of the violent crimes and injustice in their hometown of New Orleans, they decide to take justice into their own hands.

The Killing’s Michelle Forbes has signed on to USA Network’s CIA drama, Treadstone, joining Jeremy Irvine, Brian J. Smith, Patrick Fugit, Michael Gaston, Tess Haubrich, and Shruti Haasan in the cast. The drama hails from Heroes creator Tim Kring and Ben Smith (a producer of the "Bourne" franchise) and explores the origin story and present-day actions of a CIA black ops program known as Operation Treadstone — a covert program that uses behavior-modification protocol to turn recruits into nearly superhuman assassins. The first season follows sleeper agents across the globe as they’re mysteriously "awakened" to resume their deadly missions.

HBO has scheduled Monday, August 12 for the premiere of the ten-part limited series, Our Boys. The project is set in the summer of 2014, when three Jewish teenagers are kidnapped and murdered by Hamas militants. Two days later, the burned body of a Palestinian teenager from eastern Jerusalem is found in a forest on the western outskirts of the city. In the ensuing days, an agent from the internal terror division of Shin Bet investigates the murder, while the parents of the slain teenager begin their long and anguished journey toward justice and consolation.

The Hallmark Channel posted a trailer for its newest Mystery 101 movie, Playing Dead, where crime fiction professor Amy (Jill Wagner) and Detective Travis (Kristoffer Polaha) team up to solve the latest murder in their small town.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham talked about mysteries by Australian authors, along with some news about Linda Fairstein, women writing in the mystery genre, and more.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Cara Black to discuss Murder in Bel-Air, the 19th installment in Black’s Paris-set series featuring private eye, Aimée Leduc.

Spybrary's latest episode featured a guest panel discussing the works of James Bond continuation author, John Gardner.

On this week's Writer's Detective Bureau, host Adam Richardson, a veteran police detective, took on topics including "Character Arc, Detective Sergeant Demotion, and Sex Offenders."

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Bradley Cooper is in talks to star in Guillermo del Toro's retelling of William Lindsay Gresham's noir novel, Nightmare Alley. Cooper would replace Leonardo di Caprio after the actor couldn't come to an agreement with the film's producers. The 1947 adaptation starred Tyrone Power as an ambitious young con-man who teams up with a female psychiatrist who is even more corrupt than he is. At first, they enjoy success fleecing people with their mentalist act, but then she turns the tables on him, out-manipulating the manipulator.

Entertainment One has set Jon Turteltaub to direct Insane, a film based on "Crazy" Eddie Antar, the late consumer electronics king who wound up serving six years in prison for perpetrating one of the greatest securities frauds in history.

Dominic Monaghan (Lost) and Clancy Brown (Brilliance; Emergence) are joining Mel Gibson and Charlie Hunnam in the upcoming action-thriller, Waldo, directed by Tim Kirby. Based on the novel by Howard Gould, the story centers around a disgraced LAPD detective (Hunnam), who’s spent the past three years living off the grid. He’s reluctantly pulled back into his old life by a former lover in order to solve the murder of an eccentric celebrity’s wife. There’s no information on who exactly Monaghan will be playing in the film, but Brown will play the role of plain clothes detective Big Jim Cuppy.

Emile Hirsch is joining Mel Gibson in Force of Nature. Hirsch will play a cop who must protect the remaining residents of a building in the midst of a hurricane evacuation while violent criminals attempt to pull off a mysterious heist within the structure. Gibson plays a stubborn retired detective who refuses to evacuate and fights back when the thieves show up at his doorstep.

Chad Michael Murray, Shea Buckner, Tyler Olson, Lydia Hull, and Jessica Abrams are set to co-star opposite Bruce Willis in the action thriller, The Long Night. Directed by Matt Eskandari, the film follows two ruthless criminals who break into a disgraced doctor’s home to be given medical attention after one of them is shot during a robbery gone wrong. Knowing that he lacks the expertise to patch up the injured trespasser, the doctor must protect his family at all costs.

Crime Fiction Lover posted a list of "The top five crime films at Cannes 2019." The list doesn't include Martin Scorsese’s Jimmy Hoffa assassination film, The Irishman, since Cannes refused to allow Netflix a place in the main competition.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

BBC One, Victoria outfit Mammoth Screen and Agatha Christie Limited are teaming up on The Pale Horse, a TV drama adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel first published in 1961. Sarah Phelps (The Witness For The Prosecution) has scripted the two-part drama which has Amazon Prime Video on board as U.S. co-production partner. In the novel, a mysterious list of names is found in the shoe of a dead woman, and one of those named, Mark Easterbrook, begins an investigation into how and why his name came to be there. He is drawn to The Pale Horse, the home of a trio of rumored witches in the small village of Much Deeping. Word has it that the witches can do away with wealthy relatives using dark arts, but as the bodies mount up, Easterbrook is certain there has to be a rational explanation.

BBC One is also adapting Emma Healey’s novel, Elizabeth Is Missing, as a TV movie. Oscar winner Glenda Jackson is set to star as an elderly woman descending into dementia who embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared. Her search for the truth goes back decades with shattering consequences.

Amazon Studios will release the political thriller, The Report, in movie theaters on Sept. 27 and then drop the film on Amazon Prime Video on Oct. 11. The film, which stars Adam Driver, Annette Bening, and Jon Hamm, takes place in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as CIA agents begin using extreme interrogation tactics on people they think were behind it. The film follows one man’s pursuit of justice and chronicles not only the CIA’s secret torture program but also the struggle to release the report that tested the nation’s separation of powers and the rule of law.

Netflix has begun production on the ten-part UK-Spanish crime drama, White Lines, which is written by Money Heist creator Álex Pina. Laura Haddock leads the cast in the English-language series in which the body of a legendary Manchester DJ is discovered twenty years after his mysterious disappearance from Ibiza. When his sister returns to the beautiful Spanish island to find out what happened, her investigation leads her through a world of dance clubs, lies and cover-ups. Also starring are Marta Milans, Juan Diego Botto, Nuno Lopes, Daniel Mays, Laurence Fox, and Angela Griffin.

Cinemax is adapting Trackers, a thriller drama series based on the novel by bestselling South African author Deon Meyer. James Gracie, Rolanda Marais, and Ed Stoppard are set to star. The project interweaves three storylines set in Cape Town that center around a violent conspiracy involving organized crime, smuggled diamonds, state security, black rhinos, the CIA, and an international terrorist plot.

Spectrum Originals has ordered a second season of L.A.'s Finest, the streaming service's first original series. The project stars Gabrielle Union, who reprises her character from Bad Boys II, Syd Burnett, as she leaves life in Miami behind and becomes an LAPD detective, partnered with Nancy McKenna (Jessica Alba).

Jude Law is set to star in The Third Day, a six-part limited series from HBO and Sky. Law plays Sam, who after being drawn to a mysterious Island off the British Coast, is thrown into the unusual world of its secretive inhabitants. Isolated from the mainland, the rituals of the island begin to overwhelm him, and he is confronted by a trauma from his past. As the line between reality and fantasy blurs, Sam finds himself immersed in an emotional quest which puts him at odds with the islanders and begins to threaten their way of life.

DGA-Award winning director Dennie Gordon has been tapped to direct the Season 2 finale of Warrior, Cinemax’s Tong Wars drama series from Justin Lin and Banshee co-creator Jonathan Tropper. Warrior is a gritty, action-packed crime drama set in 19th century San Francisco during the time of Chinatown’s most powerful organized crime families, or tongs.

Nicholas Pinnock (star of ABC’s forthcoming legal drama For Life), David Tennant (Doctor Who), and Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter) are to star in Netflix’s police interrogation drama, Criminal. The format bending series consists of 12 episodes of 45 minutes with three episodes each set across four countries – France, Spain, Germany and the UK. The drama takes place exclusively within the confines of a police interview suite, a stripped down, cat-and-mouse drama focusing on the intense mental conflict between the police officer and the suspect in question.

The Flash alum Matt Letscher is set to recur as newspaper titan William Randolph Hearst on TNT’s The Angel of Darkness, the network’s upcoming limited series sequel to The Alienist (based on Caleb Carr’s bestselling book). Brittany Batchelder, a guest star on The Alienist, has also been elevated to a recurring role for Season 2. The Alienist’s lead cast, including Evans, Daniel Brühl and Dakota Fanning, all return for the new storyline, which finds Fanning’s Sara Howard with her own private detective agency and enlisting the help of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) to hunt down an elusive killer.

Former Iron Fist star Tom Pelphrey and Jessica Frances Dukes are set as new series regulars on the upcoming third season of Netflix’s Ozark. Season 2, starring Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, continued to follow Marty Byrde (Bateman) and his family as they navigate the murky waters of life within a dangerous drug cartel. Joseph Sikora and Felix Solis will recur in regular roles, while Lisa Emery and Janet McTeer have been promoted to series regulars for Season 3. 

Arliss Howard (Moneyball), Desmond Harrington (Dexter), Kelly Jenrette (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Ness Bautista (Sense8) are set as series regulars for season 2 of Spectrum Originals’s anthology series, Manhunt. They join previously announced Jack Huston, Cameron Britton, Carla Gugino, Judith Light, Gethin Anthony, and Jay O. Sanders. Season 2, Manhunt: Lone Wolf, will chronicle one of the largest and most complex manhunts on U.S. soil — the search for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics Bomber, Eric Rudolph (Huston) — and the media firestorm that consumed the life of Richard Jewell (Britton) in its wake.

Paul Wesley, who co-starred in the first season of Tell Me a Story, will be back to star in the second season of the CBS All Access anthology series, playing a new character in the drama. Tell Me a Story, based on a Spanish format, takes the world’s most beloved fairy tales and re-imagines them as a dark and twisted psychological thriller. Season 2 will feature the tales of three iconic princesses – Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. (Season 1 weaved together dark stories based on The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel.)

The mystery/thriller/sci-fi series, Orphan Black, has been resurrected from the dead with audiobook and ebook forms, thanks to a partnership with digital fiction startup Serial Box. Tatiana Maslany has signed on to voice the cloned sisterhood in Orphan Black: The Next Chapter, which is set eight years in the future from where the series left off.

CBS has announced the premiere dates for its 2019-2020 fall season, including returning crime drama favorites such as the NCIS franchises, Hawaii Five-0, Blue Bloods, and Magnum, P.I.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Crime Fiction in Oxford is a series of podcasts offering two overviews - of detective fiction in general and of Oxford crime fiction in particular - as well as offering the opportunity of hearing celebrated crime writer Colin Dexter.

The latest Writer Types, hosted by Eric Beetner and S.W. Lauden, is back with two of their favorite writers:  Blake Crouch, who's just released his new novel, Recursion, and Brian Panowich, who recently published the follow-up to his novel, Bull Mountain. Plus they interviewed Steve Lauden about his new novelette, That'll Be The Day.

A new episode of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up with the first two chapters of A Baker Street Wedding by Michael Robertson, read by Kelly Ventura.

In the latest edition of Criminal Mischief: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction, host DP Lyle delved into the "Autopsy of a Thriller."

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro chatted with Colin Conway, who discussed his new release, Charlie-316.

Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on his latest topics of "Writer's Detective Bureau Female Suspects, Writing Research, and Police Cars."

Crime Writers On... featured an episode recorded before a live audience at PodX in Nashville, where the panel discussed the stylized, semi-serious Netflix documentary, The Legend of Cocaine Island, and the team played a few rounds of "Crime Writers Against Humanity."

THEATER

A production of Agatha Christie's classic, The Mousetrap, moves to Theatre Royal, Brighton, from Monday, July 1 through Saturday, July 6. The scene is set when a group of people gathered in a country house cut off by the snow discover, to their horror, that there's a murderer in their midst. 

The Hayes Theater in Sydney is presenting the Australian premiere of The Razorhurst, with book and lyrics by Kate Mulley and music by Andy Peterson. From the 1920s until the 1930s, two vice queens, Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, ruled the Darlinghurst underworld. Their rivalry was infamous, leading to a litany of violent crimes enacted by their razor gangs as each struggled to gain dominance in a world of sly grog (a/k/a bootleg liquor), narcotics, and prostitution.

The Idaho Shakespeare Festival is producing the classic Agatha Christie tale, Witness for the Prosecution, at the Idaho Shakespeare Amphitheater in Boise though July 28. The story revolves around a woman who hatches a desperate plan to save her husband from jail when he's accused of murder.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Fox Searchlight is making a deal to acquire Solitary. The film is based on a memoir by Albert Woodfox about the 43 years he spent in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s Angola Prison following the 1972 murder of a prison guard he steadfastly denied committing. Woodfox was released in 2016 and used the $90,000 he was paid for reparation for cruel and unusual punishment from the state of Louisiana to buy a house in New Orleans, where he lives quietly today. Much of the tale is about his kinship with two other wrongly accused men with whom he managed to communicate and organize protests and hunger strikes and eventually reforms at Angola. Mahershala Ali is attaching to be executive producer of the film, with the intention to play Woodfox.

Peter Dinklage, coming off his run on HBO’s Game of Thrones, is in talks to star opposite Rosamund Pike in the thriller, I Care a Lot. Pike plays Marla Grayson, a successful legal guardian with a knack for using the law to her benefit and her clients’ detriment. But when she cherry-picks her seemingly perfect client, she soon realizes looks are deceiving. Details on Dinklage’s potential role are being kept under wraps.

Adam Nagaitis (Terror and Chernobyl) has landed a significant part in Gunpowder Milkshake, joining Karen Gillan, Paul Giamatti, Lena Headey, and Michelle Yeoh in the cast. Navot Papushado and Ehud Lavski wrote the screenplay, with Papushado directing the action-thriller about a group of female assassins that come together after a hit goes wrong.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

NBC has given a production commitment to Langdon, a prequel drama based on Dan Brown’s thriller novel, The Lost Symbol. A joint project of Daniel Cerone, CBS Studios, Universal TV, and Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment, the project follows the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who finds himself pulled into a series of deadly puzzles when his mentor is kidnapped. 

Baby Driver star Ansel Elgort is set to headline the crime drama, Tokyo Vice, which has received a 10-episode straight-to-series order from WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming platform. It is based on the book by Jake Adelstein with a script from Tony-winning playwright J.T. Rogers (Oslo) and Endeavor Content. The project centers around Adelstein’s non-fiction first-hand account of an American journalist (Elgort) who embeds himself into the Tokyo Vice police squad to reveal corruption.

Fox Networks Group has picked up the UK rights to the action drama, L.A.’s Finest, which stars Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba. The 13-episode series, based in Jerry Bruckheimer’s Bad Boys universe, follows Burnett (Union), who last was seen in Miami taking down a drug cartel. She leaves her complicated past behind to become an LAPD detective and is paired with a new partner, Nancy McKenna (Alba), a working mom with an equally complex past. These two women don’t agree on much, but they find common ground when it comes to taking on the most dangerous criminals in Los Angeles.


ITV is bringing the six-part thriller Tenacity, based on J.S. Law's novel, to the small screen. When a dead submariner is discovered aboard the British nuclear submarine, Tenacity, the disgraced military detective Danielle ‘Dan’ Lewis is sent to investigate the accident. But when the case turns to murder it puts her in conflict with Tenacity’s crew, her Navy superiors, and into the crosshairs of an assassin who has infiltrated her nuclear base with an agenda that will not only destroy national security but kill Dan and everyone she loves. 

Lucifer has been renewed for a fifth and final season on Netflix. Based on the Vertigo comics character, Lucifer follows the fallen angel (Tom Ellis) to Los Angeles when he grows bored of being the Lord of Hell and teams up with LAPD detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German) to help stop criminals. The series also stars Rachael Harris, Aimee Garcia, Kevin Alejandro, and Lesley-Ann Brandt.

The first three seasons of cult favorite Veronica Mars will stream on Hulu starting July 1, ahead of the Hulu Original returning for its fourth season on July 26. Veronica Mars is a noir mystery set in Neptune, California, and stars Kristen Bell as a student who moonlights as a private investigator, working under her detective father to solve cases and an overarching mystery tied to them.

Syfy has opted not to renew Happy! for a third season and Deadly Class for a second, although both shows are being shopped to other broadcasters. Happy! follows Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni), an intoxicated, corrupt ex-cop turned hit man whose life is forever changed by a tiny, relentlessly positive, imaginary blue winged horse named Happy (Patton Oswalt). Deadly Class follows the story of Marcus (Benjamin Wadsworth), a teen living on the streets who is recruited into Kings Dominion, an elite private academy where the world’s top crime families send their next generations. 

Amazon has opted not to order a fourth season of drama series, Sneaky Pete. Created by Bryan Cranston and David Shore, Sneaky Pete stars Emmy nominee Giovanni Ribisi as con man Marius, who left prison only to find himself hunted by the vicious gangster he once robbed. With nowhere else to turn, he took cover from his past by assuming the identity of his cellmate Pete.

Hallmark Movies and Mysteries is debuting two new movie premieres in June:  Picture Perfect Mysteries, about a small-town wedding photographer who finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery when the groom is shot dead during the first dance; and Mystery 101: Playing Dead, about a crime fiction professor and a detective who join forces to solve the murder of an actor.

Melanie Field (Heathers) has been cast in a regular role in TNT's The Angel of Darkness, a limited series based on the sequel to Caleb Carr's bestselling novel, The Alienist. Newcomer Rosy McEwen is also set for a recurring role in the follow-on series, which includes returning lead cast members from The Alienist, Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning. The new storyline follows Sara Howard (Fanning), who has opened her own private detective agency, enlisting the help of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) and John Moore (Evans) to hunt down an elusive killer.

Newly picked up CBS drama series, Tommy, starring Edie Falco, is making a casting change for David Fierro, who co-starred in the pilot. The series, from the creators of Bull, stars Falco as Abigail "Tommy" Thomas, a former high-ranking NYPD officer who becomes the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles. The character played by Fierro in the pilot, which will be recast, is Buddy, the brilliant, manipulative mayor of Los Angeles, who becomes a rival for power with the city’s first female police chief. The series-regular cast also includes Michael Chernus, Adelaide Clemens, Russell G. Jones, Olivia Lucy Phillip, and Joseph Lyle Taylor.

Kim Dickens (Deadwood) has been cast as a series regular in Briarpatch, the USA Network’s crime anthology series based on the Ross Thomas novel. The project centers on Allegra "Pick" Dill (Rosario Dawson), a tenacious and highly skilled investigator working for an ambitious young senator in Washington, D.C. When her 10-years-younger sister, a homicide detective, is killed by a car bomb, Allegra returns to her corrupt Texas hometown. Dickens will play Chief of Police Eve Raytek, an authoritative firecracker who is committed to finding out who killed Allegra’s sister.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Strahan & Sara show on ABC welcomed bestseller James Patterson, co-author of Unsolved (written with David Ellis).

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham spent some time talking about mystery books by LGBTQ+ authors, in honor of Pride month.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Israel-based Mike Omer, the journalist and game developer turned author of the Zoe Bentley Mystery Series and the Glenmore Park Mystery Series. 

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro spoke with Matt Phillips about his latest book, Countdown.

The Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, had the tables turned as he was interviewed by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn podcast.

GAMES & GRAPHIC NOVELS

DC Comics announced a new comic book series from their DC Black Label imprint, Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity, written by #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author Kami Garcia (author of Unbreakable, X-Files: Agents of Chaos) and artists Mike Mayhew (Star Wars) and Mico Suayan (Bloodshot: Reborn). The nine-issue psychological thriller follows Harley Quinn, the young and brilliant forensic psychiatrist and profiler consulting for the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD), as she pursues a vicious killer terrorizing the city. She has no idea the investigation will bring her face-to-face with the most notorious serial killer in Gotham’s history—the Joker.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Shout! Studios and Unique Features have teamed up for a multi-platform distribution of Ambition, the suspense thriller directed by Bob Shaye that will now hit select U.S. theaters in the fall. Ambition stars Katherine Hughes as Jude Hunter, an intensely driven musician preparing for the biggest audition of her life. As a series of deaths surround her, she recognizes the pattern that seems to connect her with the deaths and her ambition. One night, her suspicions are confirmed: she becomes the target of a murderer fueled by the jealousy of her success.

The inspiration for Denzel Washington’s drug-dealing mogul in the 2007 film, American Gangster, has died. Frank Lucas and his wife, Julianna Farrait-Rodriguez (played by Lymari Nadal in the film), were once referred to as the "black Bonnie and Clyde" for their close alliance. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lucas was the chief purveyor in New York City of a type of heroin called Blue Magic, a concoction which was 10 percent pure compared to the standard 5 percent of the day. His clientele allegedly included celebrities, top business people, and politicians.

Noir City Boston runs this weekend, Friday, June 7 – Sunday, June 9. Sponsored by the Film Noir Foundation, with host Eddie Muller on hand for introduction, the theme is "Film noir of the 1950s," with that decade’s preoccupations – from racial tension to nuclear terror to the price of defying conformity – on full display across the five double features, starting off with Trapped (1949) and The Turning Point (1952).

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Keeley Hawes (Bodyguard), Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale), Sam Riley (Control) and Ben Crompton (Game of Thrones) are to join Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s classic novel, Rebecca. The actors join Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, and Armie Hammer in the film, which is produced by Working Title for Netflix. Rebecca tells the story of a newly-married young woman who, on arriving at her husband’s imposing family estate on a bleak English coast, finds herself battling the shadow of his dead first wife, the mysterious Rebecca, whose legacy continues to haunt the house.

Acorn TV has partnered with Irish broadcaster RTÉ on its latest drama co-production, the period mystery Dead Still. The U.S. SVOD service will launch the six-part series in 2020. Set in 1880s Ireland in the Victorian era heyday of postmortem photography, the period drama follows a renowned memorial photographer as he investigates the murders of his recently deceased subjects

Burden of Truth's second season doesn’t premiere until Sunday on the CW, but the network has already greenlighted a Season 3 of the investigative drama. No plot details for the third session were announced, but production on the eight new episodes for 2020 will begin this summer in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In Season 2, corporate attorney Joanna Chang (Kristin Kreuk) gets drawn into the shadowy world of hackers, activists and a political movement that won’t take any prisoners.

NBC announced three additional cancellations, including the psychological thriller, The Enemy Within. The program tells the story of Erica Shepherd (Jennifer Carpenter), "a brilliant former CIA operative, now known as one of the most notorious traitors in recent American history serving life in a Supermax prison" and FBI Agent Will Keaton (Morris Chestnut), who must enlist Shepherd to help track down a dangerous and elusive criminal she knows all too well.

Brendan Fraser will co-star with Tom Welling in The Professionals, a loose remake of the Christian Slater-fronted action movie Soldiers of Fortune, for the Scandinavian SVOD service Viaplay. The ten-part English-language series is set against a backdrop of international espionage and corporate sabotage in the 21st century’s privately-funded space race.

A casting change has landed Jake Johnson a prime role in the upcoming ABC drama Stumptown, stepping in for Mark Webber, who starred opposite Cobie Smulders in the private-eye drama’s original pilot, as Grey McConnell, Smulders’ character’s best friend. Based on the “Stumptown” graphic novel series, the drama follows Dex Parios (Smulders) as a strong, assertive, and sharp-witted army veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt, and a brother to take care of in Portland, Oregon. Her military intelligence skills make her a great P.I., but her unapologetic style puts her in the firing line of hardcore criminals and not quite in alliance with the police.

Rita Volk has been set for a recurring role on the upcoming second season of AT&T Audience Network’s spy drama, Condor. She joins fellow newcomers Constance Zimmer, Toby Leonard Moore, Rose Rollins, Isidora Goreshter, Eric Johnson, Alexei Bondar, and Jonathan Kells Phillip. In Season 2, in the wake of the death of his Uncle Bob (William Hurt), Joe Turner (Max Irons) is forced to return to the CIA’s tight-knit Virginia community to find the Russian traitor who’s responsible, and face the demons of his past.

CBS will air the entire first season of The Good Fight starting at June 16. The Good Wife spinoff, starring Christine Baranski from creators Robert and Michelle King, had been previously only been available only on the CBS All Access SVOD service. It will mark the time a CBS All Access show has aired on the broadcast network since the Star Trek: Discovery premiere in September 2017.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed DP Lyle M.D., author of many non-fiction books and the Samantha Cody, Dub Walker, Jake Longly and upcoming Cain/Harper thriller series, as well as the Royal Pains media tie-in novels.

Writer's Routine chatted with Mel Sherratt, author of the DS Grace Allendale' series, about moving through genres, letting characters dictate plot, and the Kindle revolution that helped her success. 

Two Crime Writers And A Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh & Luca Veste discussed finishing books, the new work from Jacob Rees-Mogg, the furor over inaccuracies in Naomi Wolf's new book, and they also chatted with special guest Jeffery Deaver about his latest book, The Never Game.

The latest Mysteryrats Maze podcast episode featured the first chapter of What We Found by Kris Bock, read by actors Ariel Linn and Sean Hopper.

Writer Types spoke with Susanna Calkins, author of Murder Knocks Twice; Harry Hunsicker about his new Arlo Baines thriller, Texas Sicario; and cozy author Sherry Harris schooled them on why cozies are worthy of respect.

The Spybrary Spy Book podcast featured the fourth in the series of commentaries on spy novels read by the students of Fiction and Espionage at the University of Edinburgh, this week discussing Liar's Candle written by August Thomas.

Criminal Mischief: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction took a look at the "Elements Of A Thriller."

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro chatted with Jim Wilsky about his novella, Losing Streak (the sixth installment of A Grifter's Song).

The latest episode of Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused on "Vehicle Searches, Case Law, and Org Charts."

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week, and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Shooting has begun on Tenet, which is now officially the title of Christopher Nolan’s secretive next movie. The project also added Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Clémence Poésy to the ensemble cast (joining already-cast John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, and Elizabeth Debicki). Although almost everything about the production has been kept under wraps, it's said to be is an action epic evolving around the world of international espionage.

FilmNational sold international rights at Cannes to the Shailene Woodley serial killer thriller, Misanthrope. Woodley stars as a talented but troubled cop recruited by the FBI to help profile and track a murderer. Additional casting is underway, and filming is expected to take place in Atlanta later this year.

Sony snagged another Cannes win, taking rights to the Italian Cannes competition film, The Traitor. The Marco Bellocchio-directed drama chronicles the takedown of organized crime seen through the eyes of Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino), a key mob figure who turned state’s evidence, leading to a slew of killers and drug traffickers ending up in prison.

With an eye toward a theatrical release this year, Magnolia Pictures has acquired the North American rights to The Whistlers, the inventive crime thriller from Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu. In The Whistlers, not everything is as it seems for Cristi, a police inspector in Bucharest who plays both sides of the law. Embarking with the beautiful Gilda on a high-stakes heist, both will have to navigate the twists and turns of corruption, treachery and deception. A trip to the Canary Islands to learn a secret whistling language might just be what they need to pull it off.

Fresh off the box office success of John Wick 3's opening weekend, Lionsgate has greenlit another sequel, John Wick: Chapter 4, which is slated for release on May 21, 2021. Although no casting details were announced, the previous three installments starred Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, and Halle Berry. John Wick 3 starts off with Wick having a $14 million price tag on his head and an army of bounty-hunting killers on his trail. After killing a member of the shadowy international assassin’s guild the High Table, Wick is excommunicado, but the world’s most ruthless hit men and women await his every turn.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Amazon has beaten out several buyers to take world rights to the Joseph Gordon-Levitt hijacking thriller 7500. Inception's Gordon-Levitt stars as the co-pilot of a plane hijacked by terrorists, with Patrick Vollrath directing from his own script.

ABC Studios International has teamed up with Endemol Shine to produce an adaptation of Holly Throsby’s novel, Goodwood, for Australian broadcaster ABC. The coming-of-age mystery/love story is written by Alison Bell and Sarah Scheller and is set in a small town which is torn apart when two of its residents go missing.

The season finale for Whiskey Cavalier ended up being the show's finale, as ABC pulled the plug on the series. There was some hope when ABC and the show’s producer, Warner Bros., were in talks to bring the series back, 11 days after ABC canceled the drama after one season, but the network ultimately decided to pass on a renewal. The show centers on tough but tender FBI super-agent Will Chase (codename: Whiskey Cavalier) who is assigned to work with CIA operative Francesca "Frankie" Trowbridge (codename: Fiery Tribune). Together, they lead an interagency team of flawed, funny and heroic spies.

Julia Stiles’s sun-soaked crime thriller, Riviera, is returning for a third season on Sky Atlantic. The British pay-TV broadcaster has ordered another eight-part run with filming set to start in Autumn 2019. Stiles plays Georgina Clios, a U.S. art curator who attempts to uncover the truth about her husband’s death.

David Bianchi (Westworld, MacGyver) and Alejandro Barrios (S.W.A.T., Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) are set to recur opposite Alice Braga in the upcoming fourth season of USA Network’s Queen of the South, based on the bestselling book La Reina del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. It tells the story of Teresa Mendoza (Braga), a woman who is forced to run from the Mexican cartel and seek refuge in America.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham talked about Nora Roberts hitting a major milestone, more lists featuring just white authors, and some mysteries by Asian and Asian American authors.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Hilary Davidson to talk about One Small Sacrifice, her new crime fiction novel featuring NYPD Detective Sheryn Sterling.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro chatted with Brian Thornton who discussed his upcoming crime fiction anthology inspired by the music of Steely Dan, Die Behind the Wheel.

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, covered "Dictating Reports, Domestic Violence, and The Third Degree."

Meet the Thriller Author spoke with Mike Gomes, author of the the Falau Files series, about his writing process and influences.

THEATER

The Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas, announced the cast and crew of the ExxonMobil Summer Chills production, Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, adapted by Ken Ludwig. Murder on the Orient Express runs July 19-August 25, 2019, on the Hubbard Theatre stage. Tickets are available now at alleytheatre.org.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Lionsgate has picked up North American distribution rights to the cop drama, Semper Fi, starring Divergent actor Jai Courtney. Known internationally as Edge Of Dawn, the film follows Cal (Courtney), a by-the-book police officer who makes ends meet as a reservist in the Marine Corps along with his rowdy and inseparable group of childhood friends. When Cal’s younger, reckless half-brother, Oyster (Nat Wolff), accidentally kills a guy in a barfight and tries to flee, Cal is torn between his family and his job.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Nick Vallelonga is teaming up with Nicolas Cage for the action-thriller, 10 Double Zero. The cop thriller is set in the stifling heat of Louisiana and will follow two police officers who take on a personal vendetta to hunt down cop killers, but as they get closer to solving the crime, they find themselves targets of a conspiracy in the ranks of the police force.

Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek is in talks to join Denzel Washington in the cast of Warner Bros.’ Little Things. Malek would star as a young detective who teams up with a burned-out deputy sheriff (Washington) on the hunt for a serial killer.

X-Men: Apocalypse star Alexandra Shipp and Riverdale's Cole Sprouse are joining the true crime feature, Silk Road, about criminal mastermind Ross Ulbricht (Nick Robinson), who unleashed the Darknet, and the "Jurassic Narc" (Jason Clarke) bent on bringing down the young kingpin’s billion-dollar empire. Darrell Britt-Gibson (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri) and Jimmi Simpson (Date Night) also star.

The Navot Papushado-directed action thriller, Gunpowder Milkshake, has cast Carla Gugino as a lethal assassin, starring alongside Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, and Paul Giamatti. The plot is being kept under wraps but is described as a high-concept assassin story that has a rich mythology and spans several generations.

Famke Janssen (Taken) has joined Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the cast of the crime thriller, The Postcard Killings. Morgan plays Jacob Kanon, a New York detective intent on capturing his daughter’s murderer, while Janssen plays Valerie Kanon, the mother of their now-deceased daughter.

Twilight's Cam Gigandet is set to star in Marco Ristori’s action-drama Wreckage. The project charts the story of man who finds himself trapped in the rubble of a building following a terrorist attack. His only contact with the outside world is a compassionate counter-terrorism agent on the other end of his cell phone.

The international spy thriller, 355, has added Sebastian Stan and Edgar Ramirez to the cast and set a July 8 production start in Paris, London, and Morocco. The production also stars Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penelope Cruz, and Fan Bingbing as spies from international agencies tasked with stopping an event that could thrust our teetering world into total chaos. Along the way, a new faction is formed – code-named "355" (a name they adopt from the first female spy in the American Revolution).

Madelaine Petsch is set to star in Sightless, an indie thriller written and directed by Cooper Karl. She'll play a woman viciously blinded by an unidentified assailant. Now a veritable shut-in, living and working out of her apartment and never venturing outside, she waits for her assailant to make his next move.

A trailer dropped for the third installment of the "Olympus" series, Angel Has Fallen, with Morgan Freeman And Gerard Butler back as Secret Service agent Mike Banning and the President of the United States, respectively.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

At the recent BAFTA Awards in the UK, a couple of crime dramas were big winners, including Killing Eve (Best Drama Series; Best Actress, Jodie Comer; Best Supporting Actress, Fiona Shaw) and A Very English Scandal (Best Director, Stephen Frears; Best Supporting Actor, Ben Whishaw).

Netflix has picked up the Spanish crime pic Eye For An Eye by director Paco Plaza. Luis Tosar stars in the revenge-thriller about a retirement home nurse who becomes entangled with a feared cartel boss discharged from prison and put into his care.

There are cast changes for Get Shorty, the Epix series based in part on Elmore Leonard's 1990 bestselling novel: Isaac Keys has been promoted to series regular and Michaela Watkins (Casual) and Seychelle Gabriel (Sleepy Hollow) have been tapped for recurring roles on the upcoming third season. The series follows Miles Daly (Chris O’Dowd), a muscle for a Nevada crime ring who tries to become a movie producer in Hollywood with the help of a washed-up producer, Rick Moreweather (Ray Romano), as a means to leave his criminal past behind.

Rob Lowe is joining Ryan Murphy's 9-1-1 television franchise in a spin-off set in Austin, Texas called 9-1-1: Lone Star. The new series will follow Lowe's sophisticated New York cop who, along with his son, re-locates to Austin and must try to balance saving those who are at their most vulnerable with solving the problems in his own life.

Season 2 of the AT&T Audience Network's spy thriller, Condor, has rounded out its cast with the additions of Constance Zimmer (House of Cards), Toby Leonard Moore (Billions), Rose Rollins (The Catch), Isidora Goreshter (Shameless), Eric Johnson (Vikings), Alexei Bondar (The Americans) and Jonathan Kells Phillips (Madam Secretary). In season two, Joe Turner (series star Max Irons) is forced to return to the CIA’s tight-knit Virginia community after his Uncle Bob’s death, to find the Russian traitor who’s responsible.

The finale of CBS’s FBI marked the final episode for co-star Sela Ward, an unsurprising move since Ward had a one-year deal for the crime drama series. On FBI, Ward played Special Agent in Charge Dana Mosier. At the end of the Season 1 finale, Dana reveals to her team that she had submitted her resignation.

Breakout true-crime anthology series, Dirty John, will move from Bravo to sister NBCUniversal network USA for its second season, expected to premiere in 2020. With its first season, starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana, Dirty John became the highest-rated scripted series ever on the network, with ratings growing throughout its run.

True crime is also coming to the BBC:  The controversial Novichok poisonings in the UK are to be the basis for a drama on BBC Two. Titled Salisbury, the show will tell the story of how ordinary people reacted to the crisis as their city became the focus of an unprecedented national emergency.

Here is ABC’s fall 2019-20 schedule, followed by brief analysis and detailed descriptions of the network’s new series, including the new mystery-themed thriller drama, Emergence, on Tuesdays at 10pm; the new crime drama Stumptown Wednesdays at 10; and How to Get Away with Murder, Thursdays at 10. The Rookie also continues in its second season, scheduled for Sunday nights at 10. You can check out a trailer for Stumptown via this link.

With the exception of the courtroom drama All Rise, most of the CBS pilots are dead with one exception, the conspiracy thriller drama, Surveillance, starring Chicago PD alumna Sophia Bush. The pilot has supporters at the network which is actively looking for ways to take it to series, including a possible summer run. Surveillance is described as a complex and timely spy thriller centered around the head of communications for the NSA (Bush), a charming operative who finds her loyalties torn between protecting the government’s secrets and her own.

CBS's recently announced fall schedule includes the usual lineup of crime dramas:  new shows All Rise, FBI: Most Wanted (midseason), and Tommy (midseason); and returning shows Bull, the three NCIS franchises, FBI, Seal Team, S.W.A.T, Hawaii Five-0, Blue Bloods, Magnum PI, and "Crimetime Saturday," which will present some of the favorite procedurals from the rest of the week. You can catch trailers for the new shows here.

At NBC's upfront presentation, the network unveiled the fall schedule for returning shows such as the "Chicago" franchises (Med/Fire/P.D.), The Blacklist, Law & Order:SVU, and the new legal drama, Bluff City Law, starring Jimmy Smits. You can watch a trailer for Bluff City Law here.

Fox's fall lineup includes the new cop/serial killer drama, Prodigal Son, starring Tom Payne and Michael Sheen, scheduled for Monday nights after the emergency-responder show, 9-1-1. You can watch trailers for the new series, via this link.

Riley Smith is returning to the CW with a lead role opposite Kennedy McMann in the network’s new drama series, Nancy Drew, based on the novels featuring the iconic female teenage sleuth (McMann). Smith had been quietly cast as a series regular in the pilot in second position to his Fox drama series, Proven Innocent, but became officially available when Fox canceled the legal drama this past weekend. Smith plays the handsome and affluent Ryan Hudson whose trophy wife is the murder victim.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Tod Goldberg, author of Gangsterland and Gangster Nation, joined Writerly podcast host Panio Gianopoulos to discuss how to write a good psychopath, the morality of art, and why MFA programs need more genre writers.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Sean Carswell to talk about his new novel, Dead Extra, set in post World War II Southern California. It follows a man presumed dead in the war who comes home to find out that his wife has died…and that’s not the worst of it.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with DP Lyle, MD, author of more than a dozen fiction and nonfiction books including the Samantha Cody, Dub Walker, and Jake Longly thriller series and the Royal Pains hit TV show media tie-in novels. Lyle is also the creator and host of the podcast series CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: The Art and Science of Crime Fiction.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro spoke with James Ziskin about his award-winning Ellie Stone series, being a linguist, working in Hollywood as a subtitle expert, researching historical novels, the 7 Criminal Minds blog, and being the "mayor" of basically all of the mystery writer’s conferences.

Beyond the Cover's special guest was Chris Pavone, discussing his new novel, The Paris Diversion, which follows a bored housewife who jumps back into the spy game again.

The Writer's Detective Bureau podcast, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on the topics of licensing your work, how cops deal with an a/k/a, why you should consider a p/k/a, and how detectives handle end of watch.

THEATER

Call The Midwife star Helen George will take the lead in a new stage adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel at the Theatre Royal Bath in November. The psychological thriller is largely set in Cornwall and tells a tale of trust, dark romance, and deception. It was first made into a film in 1952 with Olivia de Havilland in the titular role and again in 2017 with Rachel Weisz as the lead. 

Media Murder for Monday

It’s the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins, Anson Mount, and Abbie Cornish are set to star in The Virtuoso, a noir thriller directed by Nick Stagliano that will be presented to buyers at Cannes. The story follows a professional assassin (Mount) who must track down and kill his latest target to satisfy an outstanding debt to his mentor (Hopkins). Unlike his other “jobs,” he’s given no name or photo, only that his target will be in a rustic diner in a dying town at 5:00 PM. Bound by obligation, the Virtuoso embarks on a manhunt to find his prey and accomplish the mission. Any one of the patrons in the diner could be the mark, even the enigmatic waitress (Cornish) who, even if she’s not the prey, could prove to be a distraction that threatens to derail his task, and endanger his life.

Annette Bening and Michelle Pfeiffer are boarding director Gideon Raff’s thriller, Turn of Mind, a feature adaptation of Alice LaPlante's New York Times bestseller. Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Wright is adapting the psychological thriller, which centers on a retired orthopedic doctor (Bening) suffering from Alzheimer’s who is trying to figure out — in her moments of clarity — if she killed the person the police claim she did or if she’s being deceived.

Chris Pine has signed on to star in the thriller, Violence of Action. Tarik Saleh will direct from a script written by J.P. Davis. The story follows a man involuntarily discharged from the Marines who joins a paramilitary organization in order to support his family and travels to Poland with his elite team on a black ops mission to investigate a mysterious threat. Barely into his first assignment, he finds himself alone and hunted in Eastern Europe, where he must fight to stay alive long enough to get home and uncover the true motives of those who betrayed him.

Chris Hemsworth and Tiffany Haddish are teaming for a buddy cop comedy titled Down Under Cover. Hemsworth plays a detective who goes undercover to investigate a group of male, Australian erotic dancers who he suspects are involved in a series of casino heists. Haddish will play a lone wolf cop whom Hemsworth reluctantly accepts as a partner.

Sir Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce are teaming up for the thriller, Long Gone Heroes. Directed by Santiago Manes Moreno (Alfred Hitchcock’s Gun), the film tells the story of a special forces soldier-for-hire who must return to the field of battle with his military team to track down a female reporter entangled in a huge political scandal, while being hunted by the mercenaries’ former comrades.

Academy Award winner Russell Crowe will star in Unhinged, a psychological thriller which starts production July 15 in New Orleans. Unhinged takes an ordinary, everyday incident to its most terrifying conclusion in telling the story of a mother who leans on her horn at the wrong time, to the wrong guy (played by Crowe). “Road rage” doesn’t begin to describe what he’s about to do to her and everyone she knows.

STXinternational has locked up international rights to I Care A Lot, a thriller starring Rosamund Pike and directed by J Blakeson based on his original screenplay. Principal photography will get underway in July in Boston, with Pike playing Marla Grayson, a successful legal guardian with a knack for using the law to her benefit and her elderly clients’ detriment, living a life of luxury at their expense. But when her seemingly innocent next victim turns out to have dangerous secrets, Marla must use her wit and cunning to stay alive.

Jamie Bell is set to star in the World War II thriller, Dynamite Room, based on the novel by Jason Hewitt. Set during July 1940, the story opens with 12-year-old evacuee, Lydia, walking through a village in rural England on a baking hot day wearing a gas mask. When she arrives at her abandoned family home, she meets Heiden (Bell), a gun-wielding soldier heralding a full-blown German invasion. He won’t kill Lydia, but she cannot leave the house. What is he looking for? Why is he familiar and how does he already know her name?

Simon Pegg and Lulu Wilson are set to star in Becky, an action thriller directed by Bushwick duo Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion. The film centers on Becky (Wilson), a rebellious 13-year-old who is brought to a weekend getaway at a lake house by her father in an effort to reconnect after her mother’s death. The trip takes a turn for the worse when a group of convicts on the run, led by the merciless Dominick (Pegg), invades the lake house, and Becky decides to take matters into her own hands.

Guy Burnet and Nora Arnezeder are set to star in the psychological thriller, Glorious Empire, written and directed by Matt Szymanowski. The project begins as a love story that turns into a living nightmare as Jeremy (Burnet) suspects his girlfriend, Dagmara (Arnezeder), is gaslighting Jeremy and his family in order to cover up an affair with Jeremy’s brother.  Even Jeremy’s concerned parents question his mental state, until it is revealed that Dagmara may have gotten away with the ultimate deception. The pic is described as a modern day homage to thrillers such as Play Misty for Me, Fatal Attraction and Single White Female.

 

Altitude will launch sales in Cannes for the ’80s homage thriller, Coming Soon, which follows a series of bizarre murders inspired by classic ’80s films that are discovered in the sleepy UK town of Cliff Valley. The inhabitants find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation and three movie-obsessed friends are caught up in the race to catch the killer.

Michelle Yeoh has committed to star in Gunpowder Milkshake, joining Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Angela Bassett, and Paul Giamatti. The project is a female driven high-concept assassin film that has a rich mythology and spans multiple generations.

Liam Neeson will star in The Minuteman, an action thriller to be directed by Robert Lorenz, who has three Oscar nominations as a producer for American Sniper, Letters From Iwo Jima, and Mystic River. The film is a fast-paced story of a retired Vietnam vet who finds himself responsible for the life of a young boy being hunted by a cartel (shades of the protector character Neeson nailed in his three Taken films).

Mel Gibson and Kate Bosworth are set to star in Force of Nature. The film centers on a cop who must protect the remaining residents of a building in the midst of a hurricane evacuation while violent criminals attempt to pull off a mysterious heist within the building. Gibson plays the stubborn retired detective who refuses to evacuate, and fights back when the thieves show up at his doorstep

The first trailer was released for Do Not Reply, a gruesome serial killer thriller starring Jackson Rathbone as a VR-obsessed killer and is a cautionary tale of the evils of social media.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

ABC has handed its first new drama series pickup to a graphic novel adaptation headlined by Avengers co-star Cobie Smulders. Based on the Stumptown graphic novel series, the project follows Dex Parios (Smulders) as a strong, assertive, and sharp-witted army veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt, and a brother to take care of in Portland, Oregon. Her military intelligence skills make her a great P.I., but her unapologetic style puts her in the firing line of hardcore criminals and not quite in alliance with the police. The production also made the announcement that after the pilot aired, the role played by Mark Webber will be recast after the decision was made to take the character “in a different direction.”

ABC’s NYPD Blue sequel series will not air this fall but remains under consideration for midseason. The police drama will have to undergo some reshoots and retooling before ABC makes a final verdict on the project. Written and executive produced by original series writers Matt Olmstead and Nick Wootton, the new drama centers on Theo (played by Fabien Frankel), the son of Andy Sipowicz’s character (Dennis Franz in the original 1993 series) as he tries to earn his detective shield and work in the 15th squad while investigating his father’s murder.

Another classic show revival attempt, New York Undercover, a reboot of the 1990s Dick Wolf cop drama, will not be going forward at ABC. Wolf and the pilot’s leading studio, Universal TV, are still committed to the project and plan to shop it elsewhere. ABC also cancelled The Fix, the drama series from ex-O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark that centered on Maya Travis (Robin Tunney), an L.A. D.A. who suffers a devastating defeat when prosecuting an A-list actor for double murder.

Nathan Fillion fans will rejoice in news that ABC has renewed The Rookie for a second season. Fillion plays John Nolan, the oldest rookie in the LAPD, who cast aside his comfortable, small town life and moved to L.A. to pursue his dream of being a police officer. ABC also renewed How to Get Away with Murder and Station 19.

 

John Lithgow is set for a lead role opposite Matthew Rhys and Tatiana Maslany in Perry Mason, HBO’s limited-run series. The reimagined Perry Mason is set in 1932 Los Angeles, which is booming while the rest of the country recovers from the Great Depression. It's an origin story for one of American fiction’s most legendary criminal defense lawyers, Perry Mason (Rhys), before he became the iconic attorney.

Kristin Scott Thomas has joined Rebecca, Ben Wheatley’s new adaptation for Netflix of the classic Daphne du Maurier novel. The project also stars Lily James playing the second Mrs. de Winter, who arrives at Manderley with new husband Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer). Kristin Scott Thomas will play Hammer’s longtime housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, who was played by Judith Anderson in the original 1940 film of the same name starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.

A day after the CW ordered the Nancy Drew pilot to series, producers announced a casting change, with Scott Wolf replacing Freddie Prinze Jr. as Nancy’s dad, Carson Drew. Carson Drew is described as a dynamic attorney who has become estranged from Nancy following the recent death of his beloved wife. But his attempts to reconnect with his daughter run aground when Nancy’s murder investigation reveals unsettling secrets from Carson’s own past.

Levy Tran will be promoted to series regular on the just-ordered fourth season of CBS’s action drama series, MacGyver. Tran was introduced as a recurring new character in the second half of the current third season designed to help fill the void left by the departure of series’ original co-lead George Eads. Tran plays Desiree Nguyen (Desi), who joins the Phoenix Foundation to protect MacGyver (Lucas Till) and his team on their global missions.

Oxygen Media announced nearly a dozen series projects that embrace the true-crime genre, greenlighting shows featuring the likes of Kim Kardashian, Nancy Grace, Kate Snow, Mark Wahlberg, Ice-T, Jason Blum, and others. The new series don’t have airdates just yet.

CBS has made its first drama series orders of the season, picking up Dick Wolf’s FBI: Most Wanted spinoff and the legal drama, All Rise (fka Courthouse) from writer Greg Spottiswood. Wolf currently has six drama series picked up for next season, the two FBI dramas at CBS, the three Chicago series on NBC and Law & Order: SVU, also on NBC, heading into a record-breaking 21st season. Another pickup recently announced is the police drama, Tommy, starring Edie Falco as the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles.

CBS announced it is renewing the police procedural Hawaii Five-0 for Season 10, with series' current regulars, Scott Caan, Alex O'Loughlin, Chi McBride, and Jorge Garcia, returning to fight crime in the Aloha State. Other crime dramas renewed include SEAL Team, S.W.A.T., and MacGyver. They join previously renewed procedurals NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New Orleans, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, Magnum P.I., and FBI.

Although Bull was also renewed by CBS, the sexual harassment allegations against star Michael Weatherly has led Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television to walk away from the popular legal drama. A rep for Amblin confirmed to Deadline that Steven Spielberg, Amblin Television, Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey are no longer attached to Bull, declining further comment.

There are a few other CBS crime dramas that are still on the bubble and yet to be renewed or canceled, including Instinct, based on the James Patterson novel and starring Alan Cumming as a former CIA operative who is lured back to his old life when the NYPD needs his help to stop a serial killer; The Code, in which the military's brightest minds take on the United States' toughest legal challenges; The Red line, which follows the lives of three vastly different Chicago families whose stories of loss and tragedy intersect in the wake of the mistaken shooting of an African-American doctor by a white cop; and Ransom, centered on renowned crisis and hostage negotiator, Eric Beaumont, who employs insight into human behavior to deal with challenging kidnap and ransom cases.

Blindspot fans can breathe a sigh of relief for now. After being on the bubble, the mystery drama starring Sullivan Stapleton and Jaimie Alexander has been renewed for a fifth and final season by NBC. The pickup comes despite NBC’s recent decision to bench Blindspot for the May sweep. NBC also picked up the pilot Emergence to series; the multi-faceted mystery stars Allison Tolman as a police chief who takes in a child with no memory after an accident, which leads to a conspiracy larger than the chief ever imagined. And the peacock network also ordered a full series of Lincoln, the adaptation of the crime fiction novels of Jeffery Deaver about a a quadriplegic forensic criminalist.

 

ABC has canceled the Shondaland legal drama, For the People, after two seasons. Set in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (a.k.a. “The Mother Court”), the Shondaland series centered on six talented young lawyers working on opposite sides of the law. It first debuted as a midseason replacement last year, and has since struggled to gain a foothold in the ratings.

Fox announced its new series pickups, including Prodigal Son, which centers on Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne), an acclaimed criminal psychologist, who knows how killers think because his father (Michael Sheen) was one of the worst; neXt, starring John Slattery as a brilliant but paranoid former tech CEO who joins a Homeland Cybersecurity Agent and her team to stop the world’s first artificial intelligence crisis; and the police drama, Deputy, headlined by Stephen Dorff.

Fans of Lethal Weapon won't be happy to hear that Fox has cancelled the show after three seasons. The program's fate was essentially sealed when Clayne Crawford was fired in the wake of multiple behind-the-scenes issues, and star Damon Wayans also announced he was leaving the show.

The spring season of show pickups and cancellations can be a bit dizzying, but Deadline has a handy photo gallery of all the cancelled shows (thus far), and TV Guide also has a list.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The latest episode of Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast features the mystery short story, “Liquor Store Holdup” by K.M. Rockwood, read by Sean Hopper. The story was first published in Jack Hardway’s Crime Magazine, v. 2 # 2, March/April 2015.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham discussed the Edgar Awards, the Agatha Awards, and infuriating cookie giving.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro chatted with Hanna Jameson about her new novel, The Last.

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused on “Robbery vs. Burglary, Writer’s Intro to Guns, and Words of Wisdom.”

Spybrary featured the third in their series of commentaries on spy novels read by the students of Fiction and Espionage at the University of Edinburgh. This week, the students discussed The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming.

THEATRE

Dublin, Ireland's Bord Gáis Energy Theatre is presenting the adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ novel, The Girl on the Train, from June 3-8. Samantha Womack stars in the mystery psychological thriller about a divorcée who becomes entangled in a missing persons investigation that leads to bigger revelations than she could ever have anticipated.

GAMES

Bravo Media is expanding its slate with Spy Games, an espionage-inspired reality competition series hosted by model and martial artist Mia Kang. Spy Games follows ten contestants as they battle it out in the ultimate game of espionage for a $100,000 prize.

There's a John Wick game in the works, based on the film series about the legendary hitman, in what the publishers describe as “fight-choreographed chess brought to life in a video game.” It will be an interactive experience that will implement the “gun fu style” from the movies and expand the universe previously established on the big screen.

Media Murder for Monday

It’s the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Moonage Pictures is adapting Lionel Davidson’s Russian spy thriller, Kolymsky Heights. The BBC Studios-backed firm optioned the novel, which was originally published in 1994 but was republished by Faber in 2015 after it became one of the most requested out-of-print titles at UK bookstores. Set just after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the story begins with a coded message smuggled out of Russia—a plea for help from a supersecret laboratory deep in the frozen wastes of Siberia. The note is addressed to Johnny Porter, a Canadian Indian of the Gitxsan tribe with a genius for languages and disguises, and he's reluctantly forced to slip across the border on a rescue mission, setting up a chain of events that will change the course of history.

Golden Globe-winners Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Jeremy Piven, along with Emile Hirsch and Paz Vega, are set to star in American Night, a neo-noir thriller helmed by first-time film director Alessio Jim Della Valle. Written by Della Valle, the plot follows Michael Rubino (Hirsch) who has just become the Don of the New York Mafia, but his greatest dream is to devote his life to painting and become a great artist. John Kaplan (Meyers), an art dealer, may feel like his life is in shambles, but he still has the best eye for spotting fakes in the world. Their paths, apparently distant, cross when Andy Warhol’s Pink Marilyn is stolen, setting off a series of unexpected events that upend their lives.

Nicholas Hoult will be joining Angelina Jolie in Taylor Sheridan's next feature, Those Who Wish Me Dead, based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Michael Koryta. The thriller centers on a teen in witness protection hiding out from a pair of killers in a wilderness skills program in Montana while a fire rages. Sheridan, who penned the script for Hell or High Water, will adapt the book for the big screen.

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood will play in Cannes after all. The news comes after the feature was not included in the original batch of pictures unveiled last month. The film follows a faded TV actor and his stunt double (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt), trying to achieve success during the final years of Hollywood’s Golden Age, in a story that also intersects with the Charles Manson cult.


TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Stolen Pictures, the production company set up by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, will adapt Ben Aaronovitch's epic Rivers of London fantasy-crime book series. The project follows Peter Grant, “an ordinary police constable turned magician's apprentice as he solves crimes across the British capital with a blend of urban fantasy, mystery thriller and fantasy caper.”

Charles Roven’s Atlas Entertainment has acquired the rights to Joseph Finder’s thriller, Judgment, with plans to adapt the novel into a series. The novel centers on Juliana Brody, a formidable judge in the Superior Court of Massachusetts, who is blackmailed after a night of infidelity is captured on video. As the terrifying conspiracy unfolds, it becomes clear that personal humiliation, even the possible destruction of her career, are the least of her concerns and that turning the tables on her adversaries will require her to be as ruthless as they are.

Indie TV production company Drama Republic won a bidding rights war for the thriller, Seven Lies, written by Transworld editor Lizzy Goudsmit under the pen-name of Elizabeth Kay. The book is about the tangled, toxic friendships between women, the dark underbelly of obsessive love, and how lies can be dangerous, but the truth can be devastating.

In a return to television, Evangeline Lilly (Avengers: Endgame) is set to star in and executive produce the eight-episode mystery drama series, Albedo, that will be internationally distributed by eOne. Co-created and executive produced by writing duo Max and Adam Reid (Sneaky Pete), Albedo is set 150 years in the future and follows Detective Vivien Coleman (Lilly) who is dispatched to the edge of our solar system to investigate a scientist’s mysterious death on board an isolated space station. 

Martin Compston, Laura Fraser, Molly Windsor, and Jennifer Spence are to star in UKTV’s six-part crime drama series, Traces, which is based on an original idea from crime writer Val McDermid. Traces explores the world of the Scottish Institute of Forensic Science and follows female characters who will use the rigors of forensics to uncover the truth about an unsolved murder case.

The British crime drama, The Bay, which has been dubbed the “Northern Broadchurch,” has been renewed for a second season by ITV. The series stars Morven Christie as police Family Liaison Officer DS Lisa Armstrong and Daniel Ryan, who plays DI Tony Manning.

Hulu just dropped a teaser video for the Veronica Mars revival during its upfront event in New York. The clip shows the return of Kristen Bell, as private eye Veronica Mars, and many other familiar faces to the fictional seaside town of Neptune, California. 

A trailer was released for Showtime’s City On a Hill, the upcoming drama executive produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck that stars Kevin Bacon as a corrupt FBI veteran who forms an unlikely alliance with an assistant district attorney (played by Aldis Hodge). 

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

WNYC studios posted a podcast with the title “Is True Crime Jinxed?” and spoke with documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger, co-creator of the Paradise Lost trilogy, about modern filmmaking, the responsibility of the artist, and different interpretations of “truth.” 

The SPA Girls spent time with Adam Richardson, an American cop who helps authors and screenwriters with their crime-fiction questions through his website and podcast called the Writer’s Detective Bureau. 

Speaking of the Writer's Detective Bureau, this week's episode focused on Steven Pressfield’s Resistance, the difference between robbery and burglary, how the elements of a crime guide dialogue, an introduction to handguns for writers, and some mantras related to police work and life in general. 

Writer Types chatted with Angie Kim about her debut novel, Miracle Creek; there were interviews of Sophie Hannah and several more authors in Chicago at the Murder & Mayhem conference; plus this week's UnPanel segment featured Kellye Garrett, Frankie Bailey, Alex Segura, and Gigi Pandian of the Crime Writers of Color group.

In this week's episode of Two Crime Writers and a Microphone, hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste discussed the latest book from Fifty Shades of Grey author EL James and a new film about JRR Tolkien that angered his estate. The special guest was Neil Broadfoot, talking about his latest book, No Man's Land, haggis hunting, being a Gamekeeper, and more.

Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover podcast welcomed Kris Frieswick, author of The Ghost Manuscript. The book follows rare book authenticator Carys Jones who must track the clues hidden in a previously unknown journal, leading to a tomb that could rewrite the history of Western civilization.

Criminal Mischief: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction with Dr. D.P. Lyle focused on the various types of gunshot wounds to the chest, with relevant points for crime writers.

Crime Writers On ... True Crime Review was joined by special guest Sarah D. Bunting from the blog The Blotter Presents as they discussed the Maryland Court of Appeals' refusal to reconsider its recent decision reinstating Adnan Syed's conviction; a new six-part podcast series looking at the 2010 death of a blind woman from Halifax; and a look at the new eight-part series, The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

THEATER

Vertigo Theater's Mystery Theatre Series in Calgary, Canada is presenting The Invisible Agents of Ugentlemanly Warfare, May 11-June 9. The story is set in 1939 when Canadian millionaire William Stephenson convinced Churchill and Roosevelt to combine forces in a joint covert effort against the Nazis. He assembled an elite team of spies, including the unlikeliest of agents: six irrepressible young women.

The Hayes Theater is presenting the Australian premiere of American Psycho, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, with a book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and music and lyrics by Tony Award winning Duncan Sheik. This bold musical takes on the shocking depiction of excesses of the 1980s as told through the devious actions of Patrick Bateman, a young, handsome and wealthy investment banker who becomes a serial killer.

The Evolution Theatre Company in Columbus, Ohio, is presenting The Vultures, a modern, comedic, gay spin on the haunted house/mystery genre. The Vultures is a modern-day adaptation of two classic works, The Cat and the Canary by John Willard and The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. Performances take place May 22-June 1 at the Columbus Performing Arts Center's Van Fleet Theatre.

The Stages Repertory Theater in Houston will feature Murder for Two through June 16, 2019. Everyone is a suspect in Murder for Two, a hilarious murder mystery with a twist: one actor plays the investigator, the other plays all 13 suspects, and both play the piano throughout.

Witness for the Prosecution has extended its run in London through March 2020. Theatergoers step inside the magnificent surroundings of London County Hall and experience the intensity and drama of Agatha Christie’s gripping story of justice, passion, and betrayal in a unique courtroom setting. There are a limited number of VIP Jury seats available per performance, with patrons sitting in the Jury Box as the case unfolds before them. 

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Sony Pictures has signed a six-figure preemptive deal for I Heart Murder, a horror/crime spec script by Tom O’Donnell. The plot is being kept under wraps, but it’s said to be a female-driven thriller, and several actresses are already circling the lead roles.  

Leonardo DiCaprio is in talks to star in Fox Searchlight's Nightmare Alley, a film based on the William Lindsay Gresham 1946 novel, with Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) serving as director and co-writer of the script (with Kim Morgan). Set in the dark, shadowy world of a second rate carnival filled with hustlers, scheming grifters, and Machiavellian femmes fatales, the story centers on a corrupt con-man who teams up with a female psychiatrist to trick people into giving them money.  

John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman), Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl), Boyd Holbrook (Logan) and Vicky Krieps (The Phantom Thread) are set to lead the cast in Born To Be Murdered. The project is set in Athens and the Epirus region of Greece, where a vacationing couple, played by Washington and Vikander, fall prey to a violent conspiracy with tragic consequences. Ferdinando Cito Filomarino (Antonia) will direct from a screenplay by Kevin Rice.

The producers of the still-untitled Bond 25 revealed key cast and production details while Tweeting from Jamaica (the iconic location for previous Bond films Dr. No and Live And Let Die). Daniel Craig returns as Bond, and other cast members set to return include Ralph Fiennes as MI6 head M; Ben Whishaw as Q; Naomie Harris as Bond’s assistant Moneypenny; Lea Seydoeux as his former flame Dr. Madeleine Swann; Rory Kinnear as MI6 chief of staff Bill Tanner; and Jeffrey Wright as Bond’s CIA counterpart Felix Leiter. The plot begins with Bond not on active service but his peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter asks for help to rescue a kidnapped scientist - a mission that leads Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain (Rami Malek) armed with dangerous new technology.

Brian Geraghty (The Alienist), Bethany Joy Lenz (One Tree Hill), and Sharon Leal (Instinct) are set to star in Blindfire, a crime drama written and directed by Mike Nell. The film centers around a police officer (Geraghty) who, while responding to a violent hostage call, kills the African American suspect only to later learn of his innocence. Sensing this was a set-up, he must track down the person responsible while examining his own accountability and the ingrained racism which brought him to this point. Leal will play his partner, while Lenz has been cast as his wife.

Luke Evans (The Girl on the Train), Mia Kirshner (The Black Dahlia), Michael Aronov (The Americans) and Martin Donovan (Big Little Lies) are the latest to join Nicholas Jarecki‘s dramatic thriller, Dreamland. They’ll co-star opposite Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly, Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez, and Lily-Rose Depp in the opioid crisis pic, which is shooting in Montreal. The film follows three colliding stories: A drug trafficker (Hammer) arranges a multi-cartel Fentanyl smuggling operation between Canada and the U.S.; an architect (Lilly) recovering from an OxyContin addiction tracks down the truth behind her son’s involvement with narcotics; and a university professor (Oldman) battles unexpected revelations about his employer, a drug company with deep government influence bringing a new “non-addictive” painkiller to market.

Katherine Heigl, Harry Connick Jr., and Madison Iseman are set to star in I Saw a Man with Yellow Eyes, a psychological thriller written and directed by Castille Landon. The project follows a teenage girl living with schizophrenia who struggles with vivid and terrifying hallucinations as she begins to suspect her neighbor has kidnapped a child. Her parents try desperately to help her live a normal life, without exposing their own tragic secrets, and the only person who believes her is Caleb – a boy she isn’t even sure exists.

9-1-1's Angela Bassett has signed on to co-star in the action thriller, Gunpowder Milkshake. Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado are directing the film from a script they wrote with Ehud Lavski, which is said to be "a high-concept female-centric assassin thriller that spans multiple generations." Angela will play Anna May, one of the unassuming leaders of a massive armory.

Using advanced new de-aging technology, Will Smith goes face to face with his greatest enemy in the first trailer for Gemini Man — himself. In Ang Lee’s futuristic thriller, Smith plays a world-class assassin hunting a man who knows his every move, only to discover that the target is actually his younger clone (accomplished by using footage from Smith's 1990s Fresh Prince era).

A trailer was also unveiled for the Gothic mystery-thriller, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, based on a story by Shirley Jackson. The plot focuses on two sisters who live secluded in a large manor and care for their deranged Uncle Julian, after the rest of their family died five years before under suspicious circumstances. When a cousin arrives for a visit, family secrets and scandals unravel.

Lionsgate released a trailer and images for the upcoming mystery thriller, The Poison Rose, based on Richard Salvatore’s novel of the same name. John Travolta plays Carson Philips, a hard-drinking L.A. private eye who takes a case in his old hometown of Galveston, Texas. While searching for a missing woman, Philips must confront a crime boss (Morgan Freeman), a shady doctor (Brendan Fraser), a sexy club singer (Kat Graham), his former lover (Famke Janssen) — and his own dark, disturbing past.

STXfilms’ 21 Bridges also dropped its first trailer, focusing on an embattled NYPD detective (Chadwick Boseman) who is thrust into a citywide manhunt for a pair of cop killers after uncovering a massive and unexpected conspiracy. As the night unfolds, lines become blurred between who he is pursuing and who is in pursuit of him.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Code Black's Meg Steedle is set to recur on the upcoming third season of AT&T Audience Network’s critically praised drama series Mr. Mercedes, based on the Stephen King novels. Season 2 took place a year after Brady Hartsfield’s (Harry Treadaway) thwarted attempt to perpetrate a second mass murder in the community of Bridgton, Ohio. Since the incident, Hartsfield had been hospitalized in a vegetative state. Retired Detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) did his best to move on from his Brady obsession, teaming up with Holly Gibney (Justine Lupe) to open Finders Keepers, a private investigative agency.

One day after announcing it had found its Alex Rider star (Mrs. Wilson's Otto Farrant), Sony Pictures Television has rounded out the full cast for its adaptation of the teen superspy drama. Game of Thrones star Brenock O’Connor will play Alex Rider’s jovial best friend Tom; Stephen Dillane will play Alan Blunt, who commands The Department, a secret underworld offshoot of MI6; Andrew Buchan will take on the role of Alex's uncle and reluctant guardian, Ian Rider; and Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo will play Alex's housekeeper Jack Starbright. Unbeknownst to Alex, Ian has been relentlessly training him since childhood and preparing him for the threatening world of espionage, and Blunt entraps the unsuspecting Alex to work as an undercover agent at the Point Blanc academy.

In addition to NCIS, CBS has also renewed its two spin-offs, NCIS: Los Angeles, returning for its 11th season, and NCIS: New Orleans, which will return for a sixth. NCIS: Los Angeles centers on the counter-terrorist division of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and stars Chris O'Donnell, Daniela Ruah, LL Cool J, Barrett Foa, Linda Hunt, Eric Christian Olsen, Renee Felice Smith, and Nia Long. NCIS: New Orleans, meanwhile, centers on a satellite team in the bayou and stars Scott Bakula, Lucas Black, CCH Pounder, Daryl "Chill" Mitchell, Rob Kerkovich, Shalita Grant, and Vanessa Ferlito.

Netflix has set May 16 for the premiere of Good Sam, a feature based on the mystery book series of the same name by Dete Meserve. The film follows intrepid TV news reporter Kate Bradley (Tiya Sircar) who is assigned to uncover the identity of a mysterious Good Samaritan—Good Sam—who has been anonymously leaving $100,000 cash gifts on the doorsteps of seemingly random New Yorkers. As interest in the extraordinary gifts sweeps across the country, Kate seeks to unravel the identity of Good Sam and the powerful and unexpected reasons behind the extraordinary gifts.

NBC has put the on-the-bubble show, Blindspot, on a scheduling hiatus during the important May Sweeps ratings period through May 24, which doesn't bode well for a Season 5 renewal. The Blacklist will take over its Friday at 8/7c time slot through its Season 6 finale on May 17. Then Blindspot will return for three more episodes, one on May 24 and two on May 31, which will serve as the Season 4 and possible series finale. Blindspot's ratings are down 20% year-over-year.

Netflix has released the first trailer for its new original series What/If featuring Academy Award winning Renée Zellweger introducing her clients to an "Indecent Proposal-meets-Westworld scenario" where anything or anyone can be yours for the taking. The 10-episode first season will be devoted to the story of a pair of San Francisco newlyweds who become wrapped up in Zellweger's character's dubious scheme, which will earn them some much-needed cash but cause the couple to do "unacceptable things."

Netflix’s new action-comedy, Murder Mystery, also released a trailer with Adam Sandler playing a New York detective who, after 15 years of marriage, finally takes his wife (Jennifer Aniston) on a long-promised European trip. When Aniston's character meets a charming and wealthy British man (Luke Evans), he invites them to an intimate family gathering on an elderly billionaire's yacht, only to be present when the man is murdered and thus become the prime suspects in a modern-day whodunit.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham beat the drum to recruit people to the Sujata Massey fan club on the latest podcast episode (Massey just won the Mary Higgins Clark Award at the Edgars ceremony for The Widows of Malabar Hill). They also picked up books from some new-to-them authors.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Mariah Fredericks to discuss her Death of a New American, featuring ladies' maid Jane Prescott, and also sat down with Randy Overbeck to chat about his new title, Blood on the Chesapeake.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro spoke with Michael Pool about his new book, Rose City, in which protagonist Cole Quick has to solve an old friend’s murder while resisting powerful forces conspiring to pillage his inheritance.

The latest Mysteryrat’s Maze podcast featured the first chapter of the mystery novel, The Inn At Holiday Bay: Boxes in the Basement, by Kathi Daley, as read by actor Julia Reimer.

Media Murder for Monday

It’s the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Alex Ross Perry is attached to write and direct Rest Stop, a feature adaptation of a Stephen King short story first published in Esquire in 2003. The project follows a novelist who pulls into a turnpike rest stop, where he witnesses a scene of domestic violence. The mystery writer, who publishes under a pseudonym, then assumes his alter ego and jumps into action. Perry's take on the story is described as “a propulsive cat-and-mouse thriller that follows the twisted journey of two women after a fateful encounter at a highway rest stop.”

Luther's Hermione Norris is set to star in the “high-concept” Australian thriller, Between Two Worlds. Norris will play Cate Walford, trapped in a tangled web of lies and manipulation with her vicious tycoon husband and their tempestuous home life. Through a shocking twist of fate, this dark and murky world collides with the seemingly warm and loving world of a widow and her two children—although nothing is quite as it first appears.  

Gunpowder & Sky has acquired the U.S. rights to Villains, a dark comedic thriller. The film stars Jeffrey Donovan and Kyra Sedgwick playing two sadistic homeowners who hold a pair of amateur criminals (Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe) hostage after the young criminals break into their suburban home and stumble upon their dark secret.

Wesley Snipes is set to star in and produce the casino heist thriller, Payline, playing the villain in the film. Described as a project in the vein of Ocean’s Eleven and Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, Payline centers on a small-town casino that turns into a battleground after two groups of criminals attempt to rob it on the same night.  

Bumblebee director Travis Knight is set to tackle the Mark Wahlberg-starring Six Billion Dollar Man (after helmer and co-writer, Damian Szifron, stepped down in 2017). The long-awaited project stars Wahlberg as Col. Steve Austin, a downed pilot who is saved by an operation that makes him part machine. The project is a big-screen adaptation of the classic 1970s TV show that starred Lee Majors.

Shea Whigham, Bruce Dern, and Zach Avery have joined the neo-noir thriller, The Gateway, alongside previously announced Olivia Munn, with Michele Civetta attached to direct. The Gateway follows Parker (Whigham), a downtrodden social worker in the grips of alcoholism, assigned to care for the daughter of single mother Dahlia (Munn). When husband Mike (Avery) is released early from prison and sweeps his family back into a world of crime, Parker intervenes and blurs the lines between professional obligations and personal desires. Outmatched and outgunned, Parker must seek help from the father who abandoned him as a child (Dern) to find redemption and help protect the only family he’s ever known.

Dear White People star Marque Richardson has been cast opposite Simon Pegg, Lily Collins, Connie Nielsen, and Chace Crawford in the indie thriller, Inheritance, from director Vaughn Stein. The film explores what happens when the patriarch of a wealthy and powerful family suddenly passes away, leaving his wife and daughter with a shocking secret inheritance that threatens to unravel and destroy their lives.

A trailer was unveiled for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, starring Ryan Reynolds as the voice of the titular character in the live-action mystery-fantasy film. The storyline: when ace detective Harry Goodman goes mysteriously missing, his 21-year-old son Tim (played by Justice Smith) joins forces with Harry’s former Pokémon partner, Detective Pikachu. Finding that they are uniquely equipped to communicate with one another, Tim and Pikachu join forces on a thrilling adventure to unravel the tangled mystery

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The Peabody board has selected nine entertainment winners for its 78th edition of its Peabody Awards, which will be handed out May 18 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. The winners for programs released in 2018 include Showtime’s dramedy hitman series, Barry; BBC America’s serial killer drama, Killing Eve; and FX’s spy series, The Americans.

John Cusack just landed his first series regular role for television, joining Gillian Flynn's new Amazon project, Utopia (adapted from U.K.'s Channel 4 series of the same name). Utopia follows a group of young adults who meet online and are mercilessly hunted by a shadowy deep state organization after they come into possession of a near mythical cult underground graphic novel. When they discover the conspiracy theories in the comic's pages may be real, they're forced into the dangerous, unique and ironic position of saving the world. Cusack is set to play Dr. Kevin Christie, who altruistically wants to change the world through science.

In February, when NBC renewed all three Chicago series for next season, Chicago Fire was picked up for an eighth season without its stars, Jesse Spencer and Taylor Kinney, whose current contracts were up at the end of this season. But fans of the show can rejoice now that the duo have closed two-year deals to continue on the firefighter drama. The deals for the three other original cast members, Eamonn Walker, Monica Raymund, and David Eigenberg, expired at the end of Season 6 last spring. Raymund opted to move on (and has signed up for a new series, Starz’s Hightown), while Walker and Eigenberg entered new two-year contracts that go through the upcoming eighth season.

In other “Chicago” franchise news, Chicago P.D. star Jon Seda is exiting, along with departing Chicago Med co-stars Colin Donnell and Norma Kuhling. All three are leaving as series regulars but could return for guest appearances. According to sources, the cast departures stem from creative reasons related to the characters’ story evolution.

Vera Cherny (The Americans) is set for a recurring role on the fourth season of USA Network’s Queen of the South, which stars Alice Braga. Queen of the South is based on the bestselling book La Reina del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and tells the story of Teresa Mendoza (Braga), a woman forced to run from a Mexican cartel and seek refuge in America. Cherny will play Oksana Volkova, "a tough-as-nails, woman of big appetites and no apologies." She has close ties to the Russian mob in New York and controls the distribution of molly in Atlanta.

Netflix has released the official trailer for When They See Us, the four-part miniseries from Ava DuVernay that tells the story of the Central Park Five, five young black men wrongly convicted of rape and murder in New York City in 1989.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Criminal Mischief: The Art and Science of Crime Fiction, with host Dr. DP Lyle, featured “DNA and Twins” in its latest episode.

The final Season Four guest on the Crime Cafe podcast is Joe Lansdale, author of over thirty novels including the Hap and Leonard series that was made into a series for the Sundance Channel, as well as other thrillers adapted for TV and film.

BBC Radio's Thinking Allowed podcast took at look at “Detective fiction - homicide and social media.”

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts, Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste, chatted about pseudonyms, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year longlist, and more.

Beyond the Cover welcomed authors Robert Dugoni (The Eighth Sister) and Daniel Palmer (Saving Meghan).

The featured guests on Writer Types included David Swinson, talking about the conclusion of his Frank Marr series with the latest, Trigger; E.A. Aymar with his new novel, The Unrepentant; and Michele W. Miller with her novel, Widows-In-Law.

The Spybrary interviewed author Aly Monroe about her Peter Cotton novel, Black Bear, and also discussed other books in the spy lit landscape.