In Reference to Murder

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to a brand-new Monday and a new update of the latest crime drama news:

AWARDS

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts handed out their annual BAFTA awards yesterday. Crime drama winners include Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director of Producer, which was won by the psychological thriller Beast for Michael Pearce (Writer/Director) and Lauren Dark (Producer); and Best Adapted Screenplay went to BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel, Kevin Willmott).

THE BIG SCREEN

Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams has been cast in Julius Berg’s ’90s thriller, The Owners, based on the comic book from Hermann Huppen and Yves H. The story is set in rural England in the early 1990s and follows Nathan and Terry, who are tracked down by an out-of-town sociopath names Gaz and forced to rob an elderly doctor and his wife.

Ezra Miller (Justice League and Fantastic Beasts) is attached to star in thriller The Mourner, based on the Japanese novel by Arata Tendo, with Casper Kiriya (Last Knights) set to direct from a script by Robin Shushan. The Mourner follows a jaded and embittered homicide detective on the trail of murderous sex traffickers, who discovers new spiritual meaning in her life when she comes across a mystical young man (Miller) whose calling in life is to mourn the dead who have no one else to mourn them.

Lily Collins will join Simon Pegg to star in the thriller Inheritance, taking over the role that Kate Mara was originally set to play. From a script by Matthew Kennedy, Inheritance 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.

Anne Heche and Jason Patric are joining Thomas Jane in the cast for the upcoming action-thriller, Hour Of Lead, from writer-director Peter Facinelli (Breaking & Entering). The story charts the fallout after a ten-year-old girl goes missing from an RV park. The girl’s father (Jane) and mother (Heche) take justice into their own hands, stopping at nothing to track their daughter down, but as they fall deeper into the search, a tragic revelation is uncovered, deepening the mystery of the girl’s disappearance.

Bella Thorne is set to star in writer-director Joshua Caldwell’s crime feature Southland, about two young lovers who rob their way across the southland, posting their exploits to social media and gaining fame and followers as a result. Obsessed with their rising number of followers, they embark on a dangerous adventure together that leads to robbery, cop chases and murder.

Ruby Rose is attached to star in the action-thriller Doorman for director Ryuhei Kitamura. The film tells the story of an officer in the Marines who becomes traumatized while serving her country and returns home looking for an opportunity to heal. She seeks refuge as a doorman at a labyrinthine, historic, New York apartment building but discovers that mercenaries are intent on destroying everything in their way to retrieve precious art hidden in the building walls.

Game of Thrones alum Lena Headey's next project is Gunpowder Milkshake, which Aharon Keshales & Navot Papushado will direct for Studiocanal and The Picture Company. Headey joins Karen Gillan in the high-concept action thriller with a rich mythology that revolves around a multi-generational ensemble cast.

Paramount has announced that Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse will hit theaters on Sept. 18, 2020. The film stars Michael B. Jordan as John Kelly, one of the recurring characters in the Jack Ryan universe who is a former NAVY Seal turned CIA ops guy. The role was played in previous adaptations by Willem Dafoe in 1994’s Clear and Present Danger and Liev Schreiber in 2002’s The Sum of All Fears.

Warner Brothers released the first trailer for the Shaft reboot directed by Tim Story and written by Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow. Samuel L. Jackson and Richard Roundtree reprise their roles as the slick detective John Shaft to usher in the next generation, Shaft’s son, as played by Jesse T. Usher.

A trailer dropped for writer-director Rohit Karn Batra’s crime thriller, Line Of Descent, starring Brendan Fraser, Abhay Deol, Ronit Roy, Neeraj Kabi, Prem Chopra and Max Beesley. The film follows an established Indian mafia family after the death of their patriarch.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie and Anthony Peckham have boarded The President Is Missing, the drama series adaptation of the novel by President Bill Clinton and James Patterson. The story centers on a powerless and politically aimless who Vice President unexpectedly becomes President and walks right into a secret world-threatening crisis, both inside and outside the White House.

Netflix has placed a series order for an eight-episode adaptation of crime author Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her. Homeland director Lesli Linka Glatter will direct the series, with writer Charlotte Stoudt (Homeland and House of Cards) penning the scripts and acting as showrunner. As the logline states, "When a Saturday afternoon trip to the mall with her mother suddenly explodes into violence, an adrift young woman’s conception of her mother is forever changed. As figures from her mother’s past start to resurface, she is forced to go on the run and on that journey, begins to piece together the truth of her mother’s previous identity and uncovers secrets of her childhood."

HBO has put into development a new drama series from Power creator Courtney A. Kemp about a group of dirty cops in New York City. Titled Dirty Thirty, the project is inspired by the true story of a gang of cops operating out of New York’s 30th Precinct in the 1990s and follows a crime wave infecting the highest levels of municipal government, corrupting the justice system and defining a city.

Fox has ordered more drama pilots, including Deputy and the AI thriller drama neXT. Deputy is an hour-long police procedural from Bright helmer David Ayer and Aquaman writer Will Beall and centers on Deputy Bill Hollister, a career lawman who’s very comfortable kicking down doors and utterly lost in a staff meeting. But when the LA County Sheriff drops dead, Bill becomes acting sheriff of Los Angeles County, in charge of 10,000 sworn deputies policing a modern Wild West. neXt is described as a propulsive, fact-based thriller grounded in the latest A.I. research and features a brilliant but paranoid former tech CEO who joins a Homeland Cybersecurity Agent to stop the world’s first artificial intelligence crisis.

AMC has opened a writers' room for 61st Street, a potential new series executive produced by Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society and exec produced by Peter Moffett, who wrote the British drama Criminal Justice (the basis of the HBO series The Night Of). Set in present-day Chicago, 61st Street follows Moses Johnson, a promising high school athlete, who is swept up into the infamously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system. Taken by the police as a gang member, he soon finds himself in the eye of the storm as police and prosecutors seek revenge for the death of an officer during a drug bust gone wrong.

A reboot of classic British police procedural Bergerac is being developed by Paramount Network International. The series previously starred John Nettles, later known for his role in Midsomer Murders, as a detective on the small island of Jersey. It ran for nine seasons and 87 episodes on the BBC between 1981 and 1991 and was created by Robert Banks Stewart. Updated for the present day, it will deal with "contemporary stories-of-the-week that run alongside a strong serial spine.”

Julian McMahon and Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes are set to star in FBI: Most Wanted, the planned spinoff of Dick Wolf’s freshman CBS drama series, FBI. McMahon will play Jess LaCroix, an "agent’s agent" who’s at the top of his game and oversees the team from the FBI’s Most Wanted Unit, which is assigned the most extreme and egregious cases. Castle-Hughes will play Lynn Khanna, a cowboy boot-wearing FBI analyst from a conservative Dallas family who is a master of data-mining and social engineering.

Mykelti Williamson has been tapped to co-star opposite Malin Akerman in NBC’s legal drama pilot, Prism. Prism is inspired by Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese period psychological thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa, and is described as "a provocative exploration of a murder trial in which every episode is told through the perspective of a different key person involved. Each new version of the facts ratchets up the mystery and the suspense, calling into question everything we have seen so far and asking, Is the right person on trial?"

Levy Tran (Shameless) has been cast in a major recurring role on CBS’ action drama series, MacGyver, playing a new character that would help fill the void left by the departure of series co-lead George Eads. Tran, whose first episode airs February 15, will play Desiree Nguyen (Desi), who joins the Phoenix Foundation to protect MacGyver (Lucas Till) and his team on their global missions.

The Office co-creator Stephen Merchant will topline the British crime drama The Barking Murders, along with Sheridan Smith and Jaime Winstone. The BBC One drama tells the true story of the notorious Essex crime spree, with Merchant playing serial rapist and killer Stephen Port, while Smith plays Sarah Sak, the mother of Anthony Walgate, his first victim. Winstone, daughter of Ray Winstone, plays Donna Taylor, sister of victim Jack Taylor.

Rosanna Arquette has joined Ratched, Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix series starring Sarah Paulson as a younger version of the diabolical Nurse Ratched from the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Arquette will have a multi-episode arc in the origins story that begins in 1947 and follows Ratched’s (Paulson) journey and evolution from nurse to full-fledged monster. The all-star cast also includes Sharon Stone, Cynthia Nixon, Finn Wittrock, Jon Jon Briones, Charlie Carver, Judy Davis, Harriet Harris, Hunter Parrish, Amanda Plummer, and Corey Stoll.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

For Novel Suspects, bestselling author Megan Abbott discussed her latest book, Give Me Your Hand, female friendship, and the interesting ways that women communicate and exert power differently from men.

Michael Connelly's latest Murder Book true-crime podcast focuses on a reputed gang member who beat a murder charge decades ago and went on to land a job as a police officer but was convicted of the 30-year-old killing of Jade Clark after DNA evidence put him at the crime scene.

Suspense Radio Inside Edition featured Keven James Breaux and Lisa Gardner. Gardner's latest, Never Tell, is the latest in her series with D.D. Warren and Flora Dane; Breaux writes in several genres including horror, suspense, and fantasy.

The latest episode of Mysteryrat’s Maze podcast featured the mystery short story, "The Way to a Man's Heart," a twisted take on Valentine's Day written by mystery author Merrilee Robson and read by actor Sean Hopper.

Words and Nerds welcomed author Stuart Turton to chat about his novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and the murder mystery genre.

Amanda Knox will host a true-crime podcast series, “The Truth About True Crime,” that will serve as a companion to SundanceTV’s upcoming documentaries. Knox was profiled in her own true-crime documentary for Netflix in 2016, which looked at her conviction and acquittal by Italian courts of the brutal killing of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

The latest Criminal Mischief: the Art & Science of Crime Fiction, hosted by DP Lyle took a look at "Fentanyl—A Most dangerous Game."

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused this week on "Diamond Jubilee, Grand Juries, and Cultural Diversity."

On Episode 67 of the Spybrary Podcast, author David Holman shares more about his Alex Swan trilogy novels.

THEATER

The King's Theatre in Edinburgh is staging a new adaptation of the much-loved film The Lady Vanishes (directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave). The story centers on socialite Iris, who's traveling home to England on the train when an accident introduces her to the mild-mannered Miss Froy. After her companion suddenly disappears, Iris is perplexed to find that all the other passengers deny ever having seen her. With the help of urbane musician Max she turns detective and together they become drawn into a complex web of European intrigue as they try to solve the mystery of why the lady vanished.

The Cambridge Arts Theatre is presenting Ian Rankin's Rebus: Long Shadows through February 16. Detective Inspector John Rebus is retired but the shadows of his former life still follow him through the streets of Edinburgh. Whisky helped but now he’s denying himself that pleasure, but when the daughter of a murder victim appears outside his flat, he’s back on the case and off the wagon.

Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap is currently being staged at the Metropolis Performing Arts Center in Arlington Heights, Illinois, with a run through March 16. In the longest-running play in London’s West End, a group of strangers become stranded in an English country boarding house, cut off by a sudden snow storm. They soon discover, to their horror, that there is a murderer in their midst.

The Sarasota, Florida, Studio Theatre's latest production is a staging of the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, the play by Simon Stephens adapted from Mark Haddon's novel. The story revolves around an autistic teenager who sets out to investigate the bizarre death of a neighbor’s dog, inspiring a series of events that expose far greater mysteries. The production runs through March 29.

Media Murder for Monday

AWARDS

The Directors Guild of America announced the winners of their annual awards over the weekend. Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Limited Series was won by Ben Stiller for his work on Escape at Dannemora. The film is based on the true-life tale of two prison inmates, Richard Matt and David Sweat, who become entangled in the life of a married female prison employee who aided their escape in 2015.

THE BIG SCREEN

Julius Onah’s psychological thriller, Luce, has sold to NEON and Topic Studios at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is based on JC Lee’s play and centers on Amy and Peter Edgar (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) who adopted their son Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) from war-torn Eritrea 10 years ago. Luce is now an all-star student athlete, beloved by everyone. After a series of encounters with his teacher, Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer), questions about who Luce really is begin to emerge.

Angelina Jolie is set to star in Those Who Wish Me Dead, the second film directed by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. The project is based on a book by Michael Koryta which follows a 14-year-old boy who witnesses a brutal murder. The boy is issued a false identity and hidden in a wilderness skills program for troubled teens while the killers are slaughtering anyone who gets in their way in a methodical quest to reach him.

Oscar winners Sam Rockwell, Octavia Spencer, and Allison Janney have been set to star in The Heart, from writer-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. The film centers on Joe (Rockwell) and Lucy (Spencer) who take the job of delivering a human heart from New York to Florida in 24 hours. When they realize their delivery is destined for a black-market buyer who illegally skipped the donor list, they attempt to reroute it to its rightful recipient, but they are soon hunted down by multiple insane criminals — including the greedy millionaire buyer, his scorned brother, and Lucy’s own drug-dealing ex-boss (Janney).

Mel Gibson and Ready Player One's Tye Sheridan are in final negotiations to star in the thriller, Black Flies, which is based on a novel by Shannon Burke. Black Flies tells the story of a young paramedic, Ollie Cross (Sheridan), navigating his first year on the job. He’s partnered with Rutkovsky (Gibson), an experienced medic who thrusts Ollie into the harsh realities of New York’s inner-city streets with high crime rates, homelessness, and widespread drug use.

Paramount has set release dates for the seventh and eighth installments of the “Mission: Impossible” series. The still-untitled “Mission: Impossible” 7 will hit theaters July 23, 2021, with part 8 coming just over a year later, on Aug. 5, 2022. The news comes just two weeks after the announcement that Christopher McQuarrie will return to write and direct the next two films in the Tom Cruise-starring action series.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

USA Network has picked up to series its drama pilot Dare Me, based on Megan Abbott's 2012 novel of the same name. Set in the world of competitive high school cheerleading, it follows the fraught relationship between two best friends (Herizen Guardiola and Mario Kelly) after a new coach (Willa Fitzgerald) arrives to bring their team to prominence. While the girls’ friendship is put to the test, their young lives are changed forever when a shocking crime rocks their quiet suburban world.

ABC handed out formal orders for a reboot of Dick Wolf's New York Undercover, a sequel that picks up 20 years after the end of the iconic series, which ran from 1994-98. It will follow detectives Nat Gilmore and Melissa Ortiz as they investigate the city's most dangerous criminals, from Harlem to Battery Park, and allows some cast members from the original show to reprise their roles.

Bryan Cranston has signed on to star in and executive produce Showtime’s limited legal series, Your Honor, based on the popular Israeli drama, Kvodo. It hails from the creators of two acclaimed legal drama series, including Peter Moffat, whose BAFTA-winning Criminal Justice was the basis for HBO’s Emmy-winning limited series The Night Of, and The Good Wife's Robert and Michelle King. The 10-episode series rips through all strata of New Orleans society and features Cranston as a respected judge whose son is involved in a hit-and-run that leads to a high-stakes game of lies, deceit and impossible choices.

CBS has ordered the legal drama Courthouse from writer Greg Spottiswood (Remedy) and Warner Bros. TV. Courthouse pulls back the curtain on the court system and "follows the dedicated, chaotic, hopeful, and sometimes absurd lives of the judges, assistant district attorneys, and public defenders as they work with bailiffs, clerks, cops and jurors to bring justice to the people of Los Angeles."

CBS also ordered a pilot for Frankenstein, a police procedural show, which centers on a San Francisco homicide detective who’s mysteriously brought back to life after being killed in the line of duty. But as he resumes his old life, he and his wife realize he isn’t the same person he used to be and they zero in on the strange man behind his resurrection – Dr. Victor Frankenstein.

Amazon Studios has acquired The Report, the drama written and directed by Scott Z. Burns, which stars Adam Driver, Annette Benning, Jon Hamm, Ted Levin, Maura Tierney, and Michael C. Hall. It tells the true story of Daniel Jones’ exhaustive six-year investigation into the CIA’s use of torture on detainees suspected of terrorist activities.

Dick Wolf is expanding his CBS empire with a spinoff of his recently renewed freshman procedural FBI, a show to be titled FBI: Most Wanted. As that title would suggest, the spinoff follows the department of the FBI tasked with tracking and capturing the criminals on its Most Wanted list.

Fox has given a pilot order to one-hour police drama Prodigal Son, described as a "fresh take on a crime franchise with a provocative and outrageous lead character and darkly comedic tone." It centers on criminal psychologist Malcolm Bright, who knows how killers think because his father was a notorious serial killer called “The Surgeon.” He will use his twisted genius to help the NYPD solve crimes and stop killers, all while dealing with a manipulative mother, annoyingly normal sister, a homicidal father still looking to bond with his prodigal son, and his own constantly evolving neuroses.

Channel 4 is making the four-part crime drama Deadwater Fell (wt), which is from Broadchurch producer Kudos and Grantchester writer Daisy Coulam. It is a forensic examination of a tragedy and its effects after a seemingly perfect and happy family is murdered by someone they know and trust, and cracks appear on the surface of a supposedly idyllic Scottish community.

David Strathairn (McMafia) is set for a lead role opposite Peter Sarsgaard in CBS All Access’ straight-to-series true crime drama, Interrogation. The project is based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years, in which a young man was charged and convicted of brutally murdering his mother. Each episode is structured around an interrogation taken directly from the real police case files, with the goal of turning the viewer into a detective.

ABC has ordered the drama pilot Stumptown, inspired by the graphic novels published by Oni Press. It follows Dex Parios, a strong, assertive, and unapologetically sharp-witted Army veteran working as a P.I. in Portland, Oregon. With a complicated personal history and only herself to rely on, she solves other people’s messes with a blind eye toward her own.

Richard Armitage has been tapped to star in The Stranger, an eight-episode Netflix series based on Harlan Coben’s novel. Armitage stars as Adam Price who has a good life, two wonderful sons, and a watertight marriage, until one night a stranger sits next to him in a bar and tells him a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne. Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne’s deception, and realizes that if he doesn’t make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he’s stumbled into will not only ruin lives—it will end them.

Netflix has hired Victoria Pedretti as the female lead opposite Penn Badgley on the upcoming second season of the breakout hit psychological thriller series You. In the Los Angeles-set Season 2, Pedretti will play Love Quinn, an aspiring chef working as a produce manager in a high-end grocery store. She is also tending to a deep grief — and when she meets Joe Goldberg (Badgley), she senses a shared knowledge of profound, life-changing loss.

In a competitive situation, Netflix has landed Indian anthology drama series Delhi Crime in a two-season order. The series (original title Delhi Crime Story) is inspired by and follows the notorious December 2012 investigation by the Delhi Police into the horrific gang rape of a young woman, which reverberated across India and the world.

American Vandal alum Tyler Alvarez is set for a recurring role opposite Kristen Bell in Hulu’s revival of Veronica Mars, from original series creator Rob Thomas. In the revival, spring breakers are getting murdered in Neptune, thereby decimating the seaside town’s lifeblood tourist industry. Alvarez will play Juan-Diego De La Cruz, a member of the Pacific Coast Highway biker gang that often find themselves in trouble with Veronica Mars (Bell).

AMC will simulcast season two of BBC America’s Killing Eve when the series returns in April. The series revolves around Eve (Oh), an MI6 operative, and psychopath assassin Villanelle (Comer). In the second season, the action picks up just 36 seconds after the end of last season’s finale, as Villanelle has disappeared and Eve having no idea if the woman she stabbed is alive or dead. With both of them in deep trouble, Eve has to find Villanelle before someone else does.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste chatted about Marie Kondo (the blogger who recently said you shouldn't own more than 30 books), ventriloquist dummies, reading in pubs, small pens from Argos, and the author photo Luca really wants.

The first episode of Michael Connelly's true-crime podcast Murder Book profiled the killing of Jade Clark in Hollywood, which was LAPD homicide detective Rick Jackson's longest case.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer Matt Coyle, Anthony Award-winning author of the Rick Cahill series, on the Crime Cafe.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham discussed the Agatha awards and Edgar Award nominees, more adaptation news, and some mysteries written by Black authors.

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused on "APB Email, Human Trafficking, and Children of the Night."

High Plains Public Radio's Radio Readers Book Club featured an episode titled "Poe Started It All."

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and a new list of the latest crime drama news:

AWARDS

The Screen Actors Guild Awards were handed out last night in Los Angeles with a few nods to crime dramas. Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (the SAG equivalent of Best Film) went to Black Panther. On the TV side, Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series went to Darren Criss for his role in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story; Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series, Patricia Arquette for Escape at Dannemora; Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series, Jason Bateman for his role in Ozark; and Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, Sandra Oh for her role in Killing Eve.

THE BIG SCREEN

Rialto Pictures has acquired rights to Yardie, which will be the directorial debut of Idris Elba, who also serves as executive producer. Written by Brock Norman Brock and Martin Stellman and based on the Victor Headley novel of the same name, the crime drama involves the intertwined worlds of the Jamaican narcotics syndicates and the music industry during the 1970s and 1980s.

Another Fast and Furious spinoff is in the works, this time involving a female-driven cast. A trio of female writers has also been brought on board:  Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy), Lindsey Beer (the adaptation of Patrick Rothfuss' The Kingkiller Chronicles), and Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Tomb Raider). No details beyond the screenwriters were revealed including exactly who will star in the film, although it's likely the current women of the franchise will be involved including Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster.


The son of James Gandolfini will take on the late actor’s iconic role by playing Tony Soprano in the film prequel to acclaimed series The Sopranos. Michael Gandolfini, 19, will appear as a younger version of the New Jersey mob boss in the film, The Many Saints of Newark, which is set in 1967 and recalls the race riots between Italian- and African-Americans in the city. James Gandolfini, who died of a heart attack in 2013 aged 51, found fame and critical acclaim with his portrait of mobster Tony Soprano, snagging three Emmy awards and a Golden Globe for his performance in the series, which aired from 1999 to 2007

Robert Davi is set to star in 8 Winds, described as a neo-noir thriller along the lines of Robert Altman’s The Long Good Bye and Chinatown. Written and directed by Daniel J. Coplan, the film centers on an over-the-hill filmmaker, a comedy club owner, and an eccentric and reclusive billionaire as they are drawn into an intrigue where a Russian Oligarch fights for control of California’s water.

District 9's Neill Blomkamp is currently working on a brand new RoboCop movie, although unlike the recent less-then-successful reboot, Blomkamp's verion is said to more closely resemble the '80s action classic. The new project is currently titled RoboCop Returns and looks to be using the same strategy as the recent Halloween film as a direct sequel to the original 1987 RoboCop. In order to do that properly, it would require getting Peter Weller to reprise his role although it's been reported Weller is not interested.

The Pokemon-based Detective Pikachu movie is still four months away from being released, but Legendary Pictures has already set a sequel in motion and tapped Oren Uziel to write Detective Pikachu 2. Detective Pikachu, voiced by Ryan Reynolds, is a super smart crime solver and can communicate like a human, although only Justice Smith’s character, Tim Goodman, can understand him speaking English. The cast also includes Kathryn Newton as reporter Lucy Stevens, Ken Watanabe as Detective Yoshida, Paul Kitson as Harry Goodman, Karan Soni as Jack, and Omar Chapparro as Sebastian.

The Reed Morano-directed spy film Rhythm Section, starring Blake Lively as an assassin bent on revenge, has had its release date moved from February 22 to November 22, the Friday before Thanksgiving. Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Daniel Mays, and Raza Jaffrey also star.

The 17th annual San Francisco Film Noir Festival in underway at the Castro Theater there. Beginning with Trapped and The File on Thelma Jordan (both from 1950), the festival advances through the years all the way up to Underworld USA and Blast of Silence (both from 1961). This year's festival runs through February 3 with a "10-night feast of danger, desire, and despair."

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Kate Winslet is heading to the small screen for Mare of Easttown, an upcoming HBO limited series, with Brad Ingelsby serving as creator, showrunner, and screenwriter. Gavin O’Connor (The Accountant) has been hired to direct all of the episodes. Winslet will play a small-town Pennsylvania detective who investigates a local murder as her life crumbles around her.

CBS has ordered the drama pilot Nancy, penned by Paul Attanasio, which centers on a former high-ranking NYPD officer who becomes the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles. She uses her "unflinching honesty and hardball tactics to navigate the social, political and national-security issues that converge with enforcing the law."

USA Network has picked up a new crime anthology series from writer-executive producer Andy Greenwald, executive producer Sam Esmail, Universal Cable Prods. and Paramount Television. The first season, titled Briarpatch, is based on the Ross Thomas novel of the same name and follows Allegra Dill (Rosario Dawson), a dogged investigator returning to her border-town Texas home after her sister is murdered.

The Crown producer Left Bank Pictures has scored another major series at Netflix, adapting Sarah Pinborough’s psychological thriller novel, Behind Her Eyes. The story centers on Louise, a single mother and secretary who is stuck in a modern-day rut and becomes obsessed with her boss and his wife—not knowing the terrible secrets they're both hiding and how far will they go to keep them.

Game of Thrones' Jamie Sives and Catastrophe's Mark Bonnar will star in a four-part dark crime caper, the first drama for BBC Scotland’s new digital channel (and will then air on BBC Two). Sives and Bonnar play two Scottish brothers who accidentally run over and kill an old man on a darkened street. After making the panicked decision to cover their tracks, the brothers seem to get away with their crime. However, as neighbors and relatives of the dead man begin to suspect his death wasn’t as innocent as it initially seemed, the brothers find their lives rapidly falling apart, as their actions begin to catch up with them.

CBS has given early renewals to crime dramas Magnum P.I. and FBI, which is a top 10 series and CBS’s #1 new show in total viewers. The fast-paced drama stars Missy Peregrym, Zeeko Zaki, Jeremy Sisto, Ebonee Noel and Sela Ward. Set in Hawaii, Magnum P.I. stars Jay Hernandez as former Navy SEAL Thomas Magnum, Perdita Weeks, Zachary Knighton, Stephen Hill, Tim Kang and Amy Hill.

NBC has released the official trailer for its new midseason series, The Enemy Within, ahead of the February 25 premiere. The psychological thriller centers around a brilliant former CIA operative turned traitor (Jennifer Carpenter) serving life in a Supermax prison, and the FBI agent (Morris Chestnut) who enlists her help to track down a fiercely dangerous and elusive criminal she knows all too well.

ITV and Amazon have released the first images of the thriller, The Widow. The eight-episode drama stars Kate Beckinsale as a woman who sees her supposedly-dead husband on TV and begins a search for the truth that leads her to danger in the African Congo.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Story Blender podcast welcomed Edgar Award-winning novelist Meg Gardiner to chat about her latest thriller, Into The Black Nowhere featuring FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix, which was inspired by real-life serial killer Ted Bundy.

On the latest Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast, Fresno actor Cyndle Cee read the mystery short story, "When Pigs Fly," by Lesley A. Diehl.

The new episode of the Debbi Mack's Crime Cafe featured the Philip Marlowe radio episode “Where There's a Will."

James Rollins was the featured guest on the latest Speaking of Mysteries podcast, discussing his book Crucible, which features a return of the Sigma Force and is a cautionary tale of modern witchcraft, i.e., advanced artificial intelligence, religious extremism, and quantum physics.

This week's Spybrary included a round table discussion on the novels of Helen MacInnes.

"Limb Pit and Infectious Diseases" was the topic of Dr. D.P. Lyle's Criminal Mischief: The Art and Science of Crime Fiction.

This week's topics on the Writer's Detective Bureau podcast, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, were "True Detective, Coffee with a Cop, and Testing Blood."

Media Murder Addendum - The Oscars

As I noted yesterday, the nominees for the 91st Academy Awards were announced early this morning (too late for the regular Media Monday post). To see the full list, head on over to the official Oscars page. Several crime dramas got some recognition this year, including BlacKkKlansman for Best Picture of the year, Best Director (Spike Lee), and Best Supporting Actor (Adam Driver). Melissa McCarthy continued her awards season roll with a Best Actress nomination for her role as celebrity letter forger Lee Israel in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

In the Best Adapted Screenplay category, BlacKkKlansman scored a nod (for Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee), as did Can You Ever Forgive Me? (screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty). Although not crime per se, another novel adaptation made the cut for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Harlem love story If Beale Street Could Talk, which is based on a 1974 novel by American writer James Baldwin.

I don't usually include superhero-style movies as crime dramas in the Media Murder reports, as they are as much a combination of fantasy and sci-fi as crime, but it's worth noting that Black Panther has made Academy Awards history by becoming the first superhero movie to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. The film was also nominated in six other categories, Best Original Score, Best Original Song (for Kendrick Lamar and SZA's "All the Stars"), Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Production Design and Best Costume Design.

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and a new list of the latest crime drama news, minus the Oscar nominations, which won't be announced until tomorrow. But I'll have a special edition addendum at that time.

AWARDS

The Producers' Guild of America held its annual awards ceremony this weekend. Crime drama winners were mostly on the television side, with The Americans winning Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television – Drama, and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story winning Outstanding Producer of Limited Series Television. If you're wondering who won the PGA's equivalent of "Best Film Drama," that honor went to Green Book (set in the 1960s about a a world-class African-American pianist and his white bodyguard/chauffeur). In its 29-year history, the PGA Awards have forecast the Best Picture winner on 20 occasions.

THE BIG SCREEN

John Boyega will executive produce the South African crime-thriller, God Is Good, described as being in the same vein as Prisoners and City Of God. Boyega is also launching a record label, UpperRoom Records, which will oversee the film’s soundtrack. Set in Cape Town’s Cape Flats, the English-language film will follow a reformed gangster-turned-pastor and a volatile detective who cross paths after an act of brutal violence sets them on collision course with a heinous gang lieutenant.

Oscar-winner Gary Oldman will co-star with Olga Kurylenko in the British action-thriller, The Courier, set to start shooting next month in London. Kurylenko will play a courier whose daily deliveries are interrupted when she discovers that her latest package is a bomb aimed at killing a witness who is about to testify against a ruthless crime lord (played by Oldman).

Corey Stoll and Billy Magnussen have been added to the cast of the much-anticipated Sopranos prequel film, The Many Saints of Newark, joining Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, and Alessandro Nivola. It's unclear what roles Stoll and Magnussen will play in the film, although it was previously announced Nivola will play Dickie Moltisanti. Likewise, details for the project are being tightly withheld, but producers say that fans of the series can expect some of the beloved characters to appear in the project, which is set during the Newark riots in the 1960s when the African-Americans and the Italians of Newark were at each other's throats.

Christopher McQuarrie has signed on to write and direct the next two films in the popular Mission: Impossible franchise, according to Variety, which also reported that both films would be shot back-to-back, with the first premiering summer 2021 and the second in summer 2022. Sources confirmed that Tom Cruise would return as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, but a potential surprise is that Christopher McQuarrie is considering having Henry Cavill and Alec Baldwin reprise their respective roles in one or both movies. Since their characters died in the previous film, it is assumed the appearances would be through flashbacks.

A trailer was released for Red Joan, about 87-year-old Joan Stanly, a widow, devoted mother, and KGB spy (played by Judi Dench). The film is inspired by the real-life story of the life of Melita Norwood, a British civil servant who supplied Russian spy agencies with state secrets.

John Wick and his dog are back in the trailer for the third installment in the action franchise, John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum, in which Keanu Reeves’ namesake killer is excommunicated from the secret society of assassins after the events of the second John Wick film. With a $14 million bounty on his head, Wick has to allude assassins trying to collect that sum. But this time, Wick has some help from Halle Berry, who joins the cast and brings with her a pair of attack dogs of her own.

A trailer was also released for the upcoming adaptation of Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, starring Sophia Lillis as the titular teenage detective. The project is directed by the award-winning Katt Shea and based on a script from the screenwriting team of Nina Fiore and John Herrera (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Vampire Diaries). The film hits theaters in March.

 

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

NBC has handed a pilot order to Lincoln (f/k/a The Bone Collector), based on the bestselling book series by Jeffery Deaver that was previously adapted into the 1999 movie of the same name starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Lincoln follows legendary forensic criminologist Lincoln Rhyme, who was seriously injured during his hunt for the diabolic serial killer known as the Bone Collector. Called back into action when the killer re-emerges, Lincoln forms a unique partnership with Amelia Sachs, a young beat cop who helps him hunt the deadly mastermind while also taking on the most high-profile cases in the NYPD.

Bill Skarsgard (It) and Eliza Scanlen (Sharp Objects) will star in Antonio Campos' adaptation of The Devil All the Time, which Netflix has acquired for distribution. Skarsgard and Scanlen join an all-star cast that includes Tom Holland, Chris Evans, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattinson, and Tony Award-winner Gabriel Ebert. The story is based on Donald Ray Pollock's novel and is set in a place called Knockemstiff, Ohio, a forgotten backwoods where a storm of faith, violence and redemption brews. Netflix describes it as "a midwestern gothic involving a serial killer couple, a faith-testing preacher, and a corrupt local sheriff."

HBO's long-simmering Perry Mason drama is officially moving forward with the signing of The Americans' Matthew Rhys to star in the title role, taking over from Robert Downey Jr. Based on the characters created by Erle Stanley Gardner, HBO's Perry Mason will follow the character at a time in his life when he is living check-to-check as a low-rent private investigator. Mason is haunted by his wartime experiences in France and is suffering the effects of a broken marriage.

After an extensive search, young British actor Fabien Frankel has landed the lead role of Theo Sipowicz in ABC’s pilot NYPD Blue, a follow-up drama to the iconic cop drama that aired from 1995-2005. The sequel revolves around Theo (Frankel), the son of Dennis Franz’s Detective Andy Sipowicz character from the original series, who tries to earn his detective shield and work in the 15th squad while investigating his father's murder. Like the original series, the follow-up revolves around a core group of 15th Precinct police officers/detectives that also includes Detective Nicole Lazarus (Alana Tal) and Detective Craig Pettibone (Rick Gomez). Additionally, two cast members from the original series, Kim Delaney and Bill Brochtrup, will reprise their roles as Diane Russell and John Irvin, respectively.

Peter Sarsgaard is set for the lead role in Interrogation, CBS All Access’s true-crime drama. The project is based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years, in which a young man was charged and convicted of brutally murdering his mother. Each episode is structured around an interrogation taken directly from the real police case files. The first nine episodes of the series will be available to watch in any order, with the conclusive season finale to be released at a later date.

Producer Ryan Murphy is rounding out the cast for Ratched, his new Netflix series starring Sarah Paulson as a younger version of the diabolical Nurse Ratched. The stellar list includes Sharon Stone, Cynthia Nixon, Finn Wittrock, Jon Briones, Charlie Carver, Judy Davis, Harriet Harris, Hunter Parrish, Amanda Plummer, and Corey Stoll. Ratched is an origins story beginning in 1947, which will follow Ratched’s journey and evolution from nurse to full-fledged monster, tracking her murderous progression through the mental health care system. Ratched scored a two-season, 18-episode, straight-to-series order.

Unsolved Mysteries is back after Netflix revived the long-running true crime and paranormal franchise that was hosted by Robert Stack and ran for over 500 episodes between 1987 and 2010. The new 12-part show will use re-enactments in a documentary format to profile real-life mysteries and unsolved crimes, lost loves, cases involving missing persons, and unexplained paranormal events.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham talked about mystery books written by Native and Indigenous authors.

Speaking of Mysteries chatted with Matthew Quirk about his new thriller, The Night Agent, featuring FBI Agent Peter Sutherland.

In this week's Writer's Detective Bureau podcast, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, the topics included "Water-Related Deaths, Bail for Murder, Here comes the Judge, nd Researching the News."

THEATER

The Vertigo Theatre of Calvary, Canada's Mystery Series will stage a production of Ira Levin's classic play, Death Trap, from January 26 to February 24. The play centers on Sidney Bruhl, who is languishing in his Connecticut home, struggling to overcome a bout of writer's block that has seen his Broadway success turn to near bankruptcy. But the answer may have just arrived when Sidney receives a fantastic script written by his former student, Clifford Anderson. Anderson just wants his old mentor's opinion, but Sidney will do whatever it takes to get back on Broadway.

The Milton Keynes Theatre in the UK is producing The Girl on the Train from January 23-26. Adapted from Paula Hawkins’ novel, the story follows Rachel Watson (played by Samantha Womack) who lives vicariously through the train window every day by spying on a seemingly happy couple in their home. When Rachel learns that the woman she’s been secretly watching has suddenly disappeared, she finds herself as a witness and even a suspect in a thrilling mystery in which she will face bigger revelations than she could ever have anticipated. This is the first stop in a tour of the production that will take it throughout the UK through July.

Following his stage successes of Not Dead Enough, The Perfect Murder, and Dead Simple, best-selling author Peter James is back with a new spine-tingling world premiere play, The House on Cold Hill. Actor Joe McFadden and EastEnders' Rita Simons are joined by Charlie Clements and Persephone Swales-Dawson in the ghostly story of the Harcourt family, who move into the house of the dreams that has been empty for the last forty years. However, their dream home quickly turns into the stuff of nightmares as they begin to wonder whether they may not be the only residents at Cold Hill. This production is also heading on a UK tour, with the first stop at the Dartford, Orchard Theatre from January 23-26.

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and a new list of the latest crime drama news:

AWARDS

The British Independent Film Awards (BAFTA) nominations were announced last week and include a few crime dramas. BlacKkKlansman was nominated for Best Film (with Spike Lee snagging a Best Director nod), while the psychological thriller dramas Beast and You Were Never Really Here were recognized in the Best British Film category. On the Best Actress side, the nominees include Melissa McCarthy for her role in the forgery drama, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, and Viola Davis for the heist film Widows. To see all of the nominees in the various categories, check out the official BAFTA website.

THE BIG SCREEN

Amblin Partners has acquired the female-driven thriller The White Room, written by Bryce McGuire and directed by Rod Blackhurst, which takes place over the course of one night in the off-season of the remote Adirondack Mountains. When a mysterious young woman goes missing and it is up to a hardened local widow to find out the truth behind the disappearance.

Guardians of the Galaxy star Karen Gillan has signed on to topline the action thriller Gunpowder Milkshake, written and directed by Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado (Big Bad Wolves). Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the project is described as being in the assassin genre with a story that spans multiple generations and featuring an all-female cast centered on Gillan's character.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Al Pacino is in talks to make his episodic television debut in a 10-episode season of Amazon’s The Hunt, a vengeance-driven Nazi hunting series executive produced by Oscar-winning Get Out writer-director Jordan Peele. The Hunt follows a diverse band of Nazi Hunters living in 1977 New York City who've discovered that hundreds of high ranking Nazi officials are living among us and conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the U.S. Logan Lerman plays Jonah Heidelbaum, who sets out to track the killer of his grandmother only to find himself swept up in the mysterious organization known as The Hunt, while Pacino will play the Nazi hunter who mentors him.

CBS TV Studios is developing a TV series project based on Michael Chabon’s alternative history book, Yiddish Policemen’s Union. The story follows Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Europe who found unlikely refuge on the Alaskan panhandle. In the present day of this world, Homicide Detective Meyer Landsman must overcome the shambles of his broken life and marriage to solve a mysterious murder with profound political and religious ramifications.

NBC has kicked off its pilot season orders with green lights to two dramas, Prism and Bluff City Law. Written and directed by Daniel Barnz, Prism is inspired by Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese period psychological thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa, and is described as a provocative exploration of a murder trial in which every episode is told through the perspective of a different key person involved. Bluff City Law, written by Dean Georgaris, is a character-driven legal drama that follows the lawyers of an elite Memphis law firm that specializes in the most controversial landmark civil rights cases. Led by legendary lawyer Elijah Strait and his brilliant daughter, Sydney Keller, they take on the toughest David-and-Goliath cases while navigating their complicated relationship.

NBC also greenlighted the mystery drama pilot Emergence. It's described as "a character-driven genre thriller" that centers on a sheriff who takes in a young child that she finds near the site of a mysterious accident who has no memory of what happened. The investigation draws the sheriff into a conspiracy larger than she ever imagined, and the child’s identity is at the center of it all.

Criminal Minds, one of the longest-running scripted series currently on television, is coming to a close with a shortened season 15 of ten episodes. There are hopes that some of the memorable bad guys from the past 14 seasons will make an appearance in addition to the return of several stars who have departed over the years, including original lead Mandy Patinkin, Thomas Gibson, and Shemar Moore.

Black Mirror star Maxine Peake is set to headline the British drama Reasonable Doubt, the true story of Ann Ming’s battle to change an 800-year-old double jeopardy law in the UK after her daughter Julie Hogg was killed by Billy Dunlop in 1989. She subsequently wrote a book, For The Love Of Julie, about the experience.

Netflix released a trailer for its upcoming thriller Polar (based on the Dark Horse graphic novel Polar: Came from the Cold by Victor Santos), which stars Mads Mikkelsen as the world’s top assassin, Duncan Vizla, a/k/a The Black Kaiser, who's settling into retirement when his former employer marks him as a liability to the firm who must be silenced at all costs. The film also stars Vanessa Hudgens, Katheryn Winnick, Matt Lucas, Johnny Knoxville, and Richard Dreyfuss.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

On Novel Suspects, bestselling thriller author Michael Connelly discusses his latest book, Dark Sacred Night, his new Murder Book true crime podcast, and his Amazon original series, Bosch.

The latest Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast episode features the first chapter of the mystery novella Ice Blonde by Elaine Viets as read by Julia Reimer.

Kristy Ramsey, the owner of Blue Lamp Books, a mystery novel and crime bookstore in Edmonton, talked to The Londoner about her love and passion for mystery and crime stories.

Suspense Radio welcomed Andrew Grant to talked about his latest thriller, Invisible, and Caesar Rondina, author of the three-part "Life Through A Mirror" murder mystery series.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with author, screenwriter, and creator of television drama, Peter May, about his latest book, Snakehead, the fourth installment in May's China Thrillers.

D.P. Lyle, host of Criminal Mischief: The Art and Science of Crime Fiction, took on "rattlesnakes and murder."

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, discussed "Coffee Mugs, Double Jeopardy, the Hiring Process, and Arrest Warrants."

THEATER

From January 16 to February 3, West Hartford, Connecticut's Playhouse on Park will stage Murder For Two, written by Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair, with Kyle Metzger directing. Everyone is a suspect in this musical murder mystery with a twist: One actor investigates the crime, the other plays all of the suspects. And they both play the piano!

The Irving Community Theatre in Las Colinas, California, is presenting Ravenscroft: A Thrilling Mystery written by Don Nigro and directed by Andi Allen. On a snowy night, Inspector Ruffing is called to a remote house to investigate the headlong plunge of Patrick Roarke down the main staircase. Five alluring and dangerous women lead him through a bewildering labyrinth of contradictory versions of Patrick's demise and that of the late Mr. Ravenscroft. The production runs from January 18 to February 2.

GAMES

More than five years after Breaking Bad ended, fans of the show will be able to dive back into the meth-filled underbelly of New Mexico with the upcoming mobile game Breaking Bad: Criminal Elements. Criminal Elements will be a free-to-play mobile game with a strategy-focused offering that tosses players into the deep end of Vince Gilligan's absorbing, morally ambiguous universe.

Media Murder for Monday

Monday greetings to all with the latest roundup of crime drama news from stage to screen:

AWARDS

The Golden Globes were handed out last night in Beverly Hills. Although there weren't any crime drama winners on the film side, television nods went to The Americans for Best TV Drama Series, while The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story won for Best Limited Series. Patricia Arquette also won Best Actress (Limited Series) honors for her role in Escape at Dannemora and Darren Criss won Best Actor (Limited Series) for The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. In the regular drama series category, Sandra Oh won Best Actress (Killing Eve) and Richard Madden Best Actor (Bodyguard).

The Producers Guild of America announced its 2019 award nominees, including several small-screen crime dramas. The Americans, Ozark, and Better Call Saul will compete in the Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television – Drama category, while The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, Escape at Dannemora, and Sharp Objects will square off in the Outstanding Producer of Limited Series Television division.

THE BIG SCREEN

Writing for Deadline, Peter Bart noted that gangster movies will return in a big way In 2019, awakening the genre "from its Hollywood dirt nap." At the top of the list are the two most anticipated 2019 releases, from Martin Scorsese (The Irishman) and Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood).

The official U.S. trailer was released for the Mads Mikkelsen action-adventure thriller Arctic, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last year. Mikkelsen plays a man stranded in the Arctic after an airplane crash who must decide whether to remain in the relative safety of his makeshift camp or embark on a perilous trek through the unknown in hopes of making it out alive.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Mark R. Harris’ Los Angeles-based production shingle, The Harris Company, has optioned the crime series Darby Holland from veteran tattoo artist and crime novelist Jeff Johnson for six-figures in a bidding war that took place over the holiday. The project is set in the gritty urban wilds of Old Town Portland Oregon and follows fixer Darby Holland, who runs a venerable tattoo parlor and "leads his talented crew of misfits into battle against hellish art dealers, criminal real estate developers and the creeping doom of gentrification.”

Hulu is in early development stages on a series based on "Simultaneous," a short story by Arrival and Bird Box screenwriter Eric Heisserer. The streaming company struck a six-figure penalty deal in order to pick up the project, which is described as a cerebral detective thriller involving regenerative past lives.

BBC America has slotted an April 7 premiere date for the second season of its critically praised thriller series Killing Eve. In Season 2, Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer reprise their roles as Eve (Oh), an MI6 operative, and psychopath assassin Villanelle (Comer) in this story of two women bound by a mutual obsession and one brutal act.

Netflix released a trailer for season 2 of its series The Punisher, the high-caliber vigilante saga based on the popular Marvel Comics crime-fighting commando, which will return on January 18. The new season finds the Punisher, a.k.a. former marine-turned-vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), as a nomad living on borrowed time.

Netflix debuted a trailer for the adrenaline-fueled action thriller, Close, directed by Vicky Jewson (Born of War; Lady Godiva). Close stars Naomi Rapace as bodyguard and counter-terrorism expert Sam, who takes a job protecting Zoe, a rich young heiress. Neither party is keen on the arrangement until a violent kidnap forces them to go on the run.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham looked ahead to the 2019 mysteries and thrillers that they are most excited about.

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, focused on "Line of Duty Death Notifications, Escaping Your Identity, and Bank Robberies."

The Edmonton Journal spoke with Kristy Ramsey, the owner of Blue Lamp Books, a mystery novel and crime bookstore in Edmonton, about her love and passion for mystery and crime stories.

THEATER

The Long Beach Playhouse will stage a production of Agatha Christie's Spider's Web from January 12 - February 9. Christie wrote the play at the request of English actress Margaret Lockwood (who wanted to play a character that was neither sinister nor wicked), and came up with a work that parodied the mystery genre including her own works. It opened in London in 1954 and was her second longest-running play, next to Mousetrap.

Media Murder for Monday - Final 2018 Edition

Monday greetings to all! I hope you had a lovely holiday season, and I wish each of you the best for the New Year! Now, on to the latest crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

At the launch of Season 5 of the crime series Luther in London, the show’s star Idris Elba confirmed that a movie version of Luther is moving forward, with writer-creator Neil Cross working on the script. Elba added, "Luther has all the ingredients to echo those classic [neo-noir] films of the 90s like Seven and Along Came a Spider, and I think what we would like to do is use that blueprint to create Luther the film." Season 5 may serve as a "segue" to a movie version, if it all comes together.

Breaking Glass Pictures has acquired North American rights to the mystery thriller and noir feature film Naples in Veils from writer/director Ferzan Ozpetek, which will get a theatrical release in the first half of 2019 in English with Italian subtitles (followed by a DVD/VOD release). The story centers on a woman is at a party who meets a confidant and attractive young man, and they spend the night together. Little does she know, however, that she is about to become involved in a crime that will pull her into the center of the investigation.

British born Guyanese actor Jacob Scipio and Mexican actress Paola Nuñez have been signed for significant roles in Sony’s Bad Boys sequel, Bad Boys for Life, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. The new installment centers on the Miami PD and its elite AMMO team’s attempt to take down Armando Armas (Scipio), head of a drug cartel. Nuñez will take on the role of Rite, the tough and funny criminal psychologist who is the newly appointed head of AMMO and Mike’s (Smith's) former girlfriend. It was previously announced that Alexander Ludwig, Vanessa Hudgens, and Charles Melton have also joined the project in supporting roles as members of a modern, highly specialized police unit.

Frank Adonis, who appeared in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Raging Bull, and Casino, has died at the age of 83. Known for his many tough-guy roles, Adonis also guest-starred on TV series including The Sopranos, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, New York Undercover, and The Equalizer.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Ahead of Ray Donovan’s Season 6 finale, Showtime has ordered a seventh season of the hit drama series starring Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight, with production beginning this spring. Season 6 focused on Ray's (Schrieber) journey to New York where he deals with a new ally in a Staten Island cop named Mac (Domenick Lombardozzi), while also trying to save the mayoral campaign of Anita Novak (Lola Glaudini), and dodge Mickey (Voight) who's on a mission to hunt down Ray and seek revenge.

CBS’s Elementary will come to an end with its upcoming seventh season. Although no premiere date has been set for the Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu-led drama’s final batch of episodes, it was announced that the modern-day take on Sherlock Holmes and Watson is coming to a "predetermined and natural conclusion" with those final installments which have already been filmed. Elementary will be the second long-running series on CBS to conclude in 2019, joining sitcom The Big Bang Theory which wraps after its 12th season in the spring.

Amazon released the trailer for Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders, which Amazon has slotted to premiere February 1 on Prime Video. Written and executive produced by Sarah Phelps (The Casual Vacancy, The Crimson Field), the three-part limited series stars John Malkovich as Hercule Poirot is the second of three dramatic series adaptations from Agatha Christie Limited for Prime Video in the US.

Wondering when your favorite shows will return in 2019? Deadline has a list of all the midseason TV premiere dates.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Crimetime Pod celebrated its 100th episode with the latest book reviews and news to ring in the new year.

The latest Writer's Detective Bureau podcast, hosted by Police Detective Adam Richardson, discussed "Privileged Communications, Autopsies in the 1930s, and Law Enforcement Mutual Aid."

On the latest Spybrary podcast, Spybrarian Jason King joined host Shane Whaley to share his 5 favorite spy books for 2018.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham ran down their favorite mystery, thriller and true crime books of the year.

On the Crime Cafe, host Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer K'Anne Meinel, who has 100 published works including short stories, novels, and novellas.

Media Murder for Monday

It's Monday again, which means it's time for the latest roundup of crime drama news:

AWARDS

The Screen Actors Guild announced their "best of 2018" nominees this past week. Crime drama nods on the film side include BlacKKKlansman, one of the finalists for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (the SAG equivalent of Best Picture), with John David Washington and Adam Driver also receiving nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. Melissa McCarthy was also nominated for her role as a forger in Can You Ever Forgive Me?. On the small-screen side, Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series included The Americans, Better Call Saul, and Ozark. For the full list of nominees, you can click over here.

The Critics' Choice TV Awards are in their 9th year and voted on by TV critics and journalists of the Broadcast Television Journalists Association. The crime dramas nominated for Best Drama Series 2018 included The Americans, Better Call Saul, Homecoming, and Killing Eve. Best actor nods include Diego Luna (Narcos: Mexico); Richard Madden (Bodyguard); Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul); and Matthew Rhys (The Americans). Best Actress nominees include Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh (Killing Eve); Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Deuce); Julia Roberts (Homecoming); and Keri Russell (The Americans). For the full list, follow this link.

THE BIG SCREEN

Two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster will direct, co-produce and star in an English-language remake of Woman at War, the eco-thriller that Iceland submitted for the Foreign Language competition at the upcoming 91st Academy Awards. Foster will reinterpret the role of Halla (played in the original film by Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir), a genial middle-aged music teacher hiding a secret life as an outlaw environmental activist with a grudge against the local aluminum industry. 

Bold Films and Nine Stories have acquired rights to remake The Guilty, the suspense thriller that serves as Denmark’s entry into the Oscar Foreign Language Film race. Jake Gyllenhaal is attached to star as a cop with a dark past who has been suspended and relegated to a desk job. One night, he receives a call from a terrified woman, and he must conquer his inner demons to save her.

Belgium-born actress Lyne Renee is joining Guy Ritchie’s Toff Guys and will play Jackie, the wife of Jeremy Strong’s Cannabis Kingpin character. Written by Ritchie, Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, the Miramax film explores the collide between old European wealth and the modern marijuana industrial complex with new gang entrants swarming. Matthew McConaughey, Henry Golding, Colin Farrell, Hugh Grant star as well as Michelle Dockery, who recently replaced Kate Beckinsale in the project.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

NBC has put in development The Last Spy, from Designated Survivor creator David Guggenheim, The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb, Imagine Television and CBS TV Studios. Written by Guggenheim, The Last Spy is an espionage drama in which the members of an elite deep cover CIA unit are killed after their real-life identities are exposed. In the aftermath, the only operative to escape the onslaught recruits her own team of former spies and assets to complete their missions while also working to unravel the conspiracy behind who betrayed her friends and colleagues.

NBC has put in development the crime drama Conway, which centers around St. Louis detective Cal Conway (Vin Diesel) who finds his world turned upside down when he wakes up from a coma with exceptional cognitive abilities. Returning to the force, he sets out to solve the city’s most complex cases but the discovery of a lethal side effect makes Cal wonder whether his new abilities are more of a blessing or a curse.

Warner Brothers is developing a limited series based on the life of American painter Mary Pinchot Meyer. The project hails from Oscar-winning writer David Seidler (The King’s Speech) and Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell’s Safehouse Pictures. Written by Seidler, based on Peter Janney’s book, Mary’s Mosaic, the drama/murder mystery explores different theories about the killing of American painter Mary Pinchot Meyer while also exploring her secret romantic relationship with President John F. Kennedy.

Epix has picked up a seven-episode third season of Get Shorty for premiere in 2019. Get Shorty is based in part on Elmore Leonard’s 1990 bestselling novel, which also spawned Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1995 feature. The series follows Miles Daly (Chris O’Dowd), 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.

Logan Lerman is set to star in the Jordan Peele-produced Amazon drama The Hunt, set in 1977 New York City. The project centers on a group known as The Hunters, who discover that hundreds of high ranking Nazi officials have been conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the U.S. and set out on a bloody quest to bring them to justice and thwart their new genocidal plans. 

Netflix announced that its upcoming film, The Highwaymen, starring Woody Harrelson and Kevin Costner, will debut on the platform on March 29, 2019. The film is directed by John Lee Hancock and follows the untold true story of the legendary detectives who brought down Bonnie and Clyde, during a time when outlaws made headlines and lawmen made history. 

The streaming service also announced a new docuseries titled Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. The four-episode series will feature never-before-heard audio interviews with Ted Bundy on death row. The series will launch on January 24 — 30 years after the date of his execution in Florida.

Amazon has ordered a third season of drama series Goliath, from David E. Kelley and Jonathan Shapiro, for premiere in 2019. Dennis Quaid, Amy Brenneman, Beau Bridges, Griffin Dunne, Sherilyn Fenn, and Shamier Anderson will play in key roles for the new season. Lawrence Trilling, who worked on the first two seasons, returns as showrunner for Season 3. Bill Bob Thornton stars as a down-on-his-luck attorney seeking redemption with a rag-tag team of investigators.

CBS All Access has cancelled its first original series since the debut of the streaming service in 2014. The mystery drama One Dollar was given a straight to series order in August 2017 and premiered a year later in late August 2018. As its title suggests, a one-dollar bill played an integral role in the series, changing hands between a group of characters involved in a shocking multiple murder. The show starred John Carroll Lynch, Nathaniel Martello-White, and Philip Ettinger.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Writer Types welcomed authors Bryan Gruley, Terry Shames and Scott Von Doviak and also took a look at some of their favorite books of 2018.

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, discussed homicide report databases, veteran detective advice for a rookie detective, conducting research with a VPN and why you should avoid TOR.

Media Murder for Monday

It's Monday again, which means it's time for the latest roundup of crime drama news:

AWARDS

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the nominees for the 2019 Golden Globe Awards for both film and television. Some of the big-screen crime drama nods include a Best Picture nomination for BlacKkKlansman (based on the real story of an African American police officer who infiltrated the Klan) and also its star, John David Washington, and director, Spike Lee; and Best Actress honors to Nicole Kidman, for the crime drama Destroyer, and also Melissa McCarthy, who played a forger in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

On the TV side, The Americans, Bodyguard, Killing Eve, Homecoming, The Alienist, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Escape at Dannemora, Sharp Objects, and a Very English Scandal were all nominated for Best Drama or Limited Series. You can find the complete list via this ink.

The New York Film Critics also handed out their awards for film in 2018. Can You Ever Forgive Me? was a big winner with the online critics group with Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant winning Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor respectively.

THE BIG SCREEN

Fox 2000 has acquired the best-selling novel Where the Crawdads Sing, described as a mixture of a crime thriller and a coming-of-age tale, and has tapped Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine to produce a feature film adaptation. The story is set in a small southern town where a young woman named Kya raises herself in the marshes after she is abandoned by her family. After her former boyfriend is found dead, Kya becomes the prime suspect in his murder.

Fimmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga announced that Spectre actress Lea Seydoux and regular 007 castmembers Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris are returning for Bond 25. Seydoux played psychiatrist Dr. Madeleine Swann in Spectre who works at Austrian clinic and has an affair with Mr. Bond. She is arguably the first Bond girl to reprise a role in a picture (although Maud Adams played different characters in separate films). Fiennes will continue on as Bond’s crusty MI-6 boss, Whishaw as the famed tech gadget guru Q, and Harris as 007 sidekick Moneypenny. TMGM plans to release the film on Feb. 14, 2020.

Stefano Sollima (Sicario: Day of the Soldado) is in talks to direct Without Remorse, based on the Tom Clancy novel that serves as the origin story of John Clark, to be played by Michael B. Jordan. The film will be the first of two novels (the other being Rainbow Six) that Paramount is adapting based on the character from the Jack Ryan universe.

Antoine Fuqua is developing and may direct the historical-action epic, The Devil Soldier, based on Caleb Carr's bestselling novel which is described as "an American version of Lawrence of Arabia, set in 19th century China." Carr’s bestseller The Alienist was turned into a hit limited series for TNT.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Starz has acquired the eight-episode crime drama series Dublin Murders, adapted from Tana French’s first two novels in the Dublin Murder Squad crime series, In The Woods and The Likeness. Dublin Murders follows Rob Reilly (Killian Scott) – a smart-suited detective whose English accent marks him as an outsider – who is dispatched to investigate the murder of a young girl on the outskirts of Dublin with his partner, Cassie Maddox (Sarah Greene). Reilly is pulled back into another case of missing children and forced to confront his own darkness even as Cassie is sent undercover for another murder case and forced to come face to face with her own brutal reckoning.

ABC, which is rebooting its iconic series NYPD Blue, is also looking to bring back another 1990s New York cop drama, Dick Wolf’s New York Undercover. Created by Wolf and Kevin Arkadie, New York Undercover aired on Fox for four seasons, between 1994-98. It starred Malik Yoba and Michael DeLorenzo as two undercover detectives in New York City’s Fourth Precinct and was the first police drama on American television to feature two people of color in the starring roles.

Quantico star Pearl Thusi is set to star in Queen Sono, Netflix's first African original series. Thusi will play a highly trained spy in a South African agency in the series.

Apple is in advanced talks to buy rights to the gritty Israeli TV show Nevelot (English translation: "Bastards") and adapt it for the U.S., beating out bids from competitors including Showtime, FX and Amazon. The show's plot involves two military veterans who go on a youth-focused killing spree because they believe today's kids don't understand the sacrifices of their generation. Richard Gere is also in talks to star in the series.

Oscar winner Brie Larson is finalizing a deal to star in I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the new film adapted from Iain Reid’s 2016 novel and directed by Charlie Kaufman for Netflix. The story centers on Jake, who is on a road trip to meet his parents on their secluded farm with his girlfriend (Larson), who is thinking of ending their relationship. When Jake makes an unexpected detour leaving her stranded, a twisted mix of palpable tension, psychological frailty and sheer terror ensues.

Netflix has renewed Narcos: Mexico for a second season, an announcement that comes just three weeks after the first season’s Nov. 16 premiere. The series charts the origins of the country’s drug war through the rise and fall of the Guadalajara Cartel under Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo (played by Diego Luna). Season 1 follows Gallardo as he unites Mexico’s disparate smuggling organizations into the country’s first global drug empire, while DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena’s (Michael Peña) efforts to expose the operation lead him to a horrific outcome with decades-long geopolitical consequences.

Desmond Chiam (The Shannara Chronicles) has been tapped as one of the male leads opposite Poppy Montgomery in Reef Break, ABC’s 13-episode summer crime drama. Reef Break is described as "a sexy, action-packed drama" starring Montgomery as Cat Chambers, a thief-turned-fixer for the governor of a stunning and seductive Pacific Island paradise. Desmond will play Jake Wyatt, a detective on the island who knows his way around a life-or-death scenario. After a one-night stand as strangers, Wyatt and Cat (Montgomery) suddenly are working on a case together — a scenario he’s not quite prepared to handle.

NCIS: New Orleans will welcome LeVar Burton, best known as Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation, for a guest starring role playing Rufus Nero, a Naval intelligence agent who works with Pride's team after a deadly virus is stolen. Cooperation between Rufus and the agents is imperative, given that this is a rare virus that could do a lot of damage if not recovered as quickly as possible.

Netflix has released the trailer for their upcoming docuseries The Innocent Man. Based on the 2006 non-fiction book by John Grisham, the six-part documentary series focuses on two murders in Ada, Oklahoma in the 1980s and the dubious means to which the convictions were obtained.

There's also a new trailer for the forthcoming Netflix action-drama Triple Frontier, about a group of former Special Forces operatives played by Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Pedro Pascal.

The riddle of Raymond “Red” Reddington (James Spader) is the central question for NBC’s The Blacklist as it returns for Season 6 and the just-released trailer suggests that the master manipulator of the underworld may be behind bars for a while.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Guardian Books podcast sat down with Sara Paretsky, author behind the iconic Detective VI Warshawski, to discuss her latest book in the long-running crime series, Shell Game.

The latest episode of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is a Christmas-set feature, the first chapter of the mystery novel Ruined Stones written by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, which is read by actor Paddy Myers.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste delved into the "hot" topic of sex in crime fiction. They're joined by top crime writers Steph Broadribb, Mark Edwards, and Susi Holliday. They discuss the do's and don't's of sex scenes in crime fiction, share some of the best and worst examples, and the results of the incredibly scientific poll carried out among crime fiction readers.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer Paul Heatley on the latest episode of the Crime Cafe.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham had a quick round up of some adaptation news and some holiday recommendations from readers.

Det. Adam Richardson discussed twins' DNA, Massive Parallel Sequencing, the First 48 hours of an investigation, and discovering your characters, in the latest Writer's Detective Bureau podcast.

GAMES

The immersive entertainment company Nomadic and virtual reality games publisher VRWERX are teaming to develop an adrenaline-laced virtual reality experience based on Paramount’s hit film franchise Mission: Impossible. The location-based game, which is scheduled to open next spring in Orlando, will bring players inside a mission and give them the vicarious thrills of pursuit—running, jumping and interacting with objects in a physical space that’s enhanced through virtual reality.