In Reference to Murder

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Solstice Studios is partnering with Fast and Furious producers on the action thriller, Shadow Run, from Magnum P.I. reboot scribe, Joe Gazzam. The project tells the story of a CIA agent who devoted five years of his life to capturing the Russian spy who killed his wife. His triumph turns into a nightmare when he’s told that, not only is America trading the spy away – but he’s been assigned to make the swap. Now he’s stuck with his mortal enemy on an off-the-books "shadow run" where nothing happens as planned and everyone is trying to kill them.

The S.H.U., a social thriller starring Edi Gathegi (Twilight Saga; X-Men: First Class), has been picked up for world sales by Los Angeles-based Premiere Entertainment Group. The story follows an affluent African American psychiatrist (Gathegi) into federal prison after he is found guilty of murdering his wife. A victim of systematic racism, he eventually finds himself in solitary confinement, slowly descending into madness and pushed to breaking point by an abusive female guard.

A trailer was released for The Tax Collector, which centers on Shia LaBeouf’s Creeper and Bobby Soto’s David, two "tax collectors" who work for a crime lord known as Wizard, collecting his cut of the profits from local gangs’ illicit dealings and operations. The Tax Collector drops on VOD and in select theaters on August 7.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Evil Doghouse Studios has secured the rights to Lars Lenth's popular Norwegian book series about eco-terrorist, Rino Gulliksen. Lenth’s book series, not yet released in the U.S., follows lawyer Leonard Vangen and the misanthropic muscle-for-hire Gulliksen as the two find themselves unlikely allies in the darkly comedic eco-thriller.

Éric Rochant, the creator of breakout French spy drama The Bureau, is headed for his U.S. television debut, an untitled global spy drama that centers on the lives of intelligence officers from the U.S., China, Russia, UK, and France. The series will follow these spies, who are involved in missions that make them meet, fight, or manipulate each other⁠—either as allies or enemies⁠—in the field and in cyberspace.

Fox is planning to produce all six of its pilot orders for this year’s development season and will continue to ramp up its off-cycle pilot orders. The pickups include the drama, The Cleaning Lady, starring Élodie Yung as an on-call cleaning lady for the mob, and Blood Relative, a forensic genealogy-themed crime drama starring Tyrone Marshall Brown, Tate Donovan, and Melissa Leo.

ABC announced plans to shoot five pilots once production can safely resume. One of those is Rebel, inspired by the life of Erin Brockovich. It stars Katey Segal as Annie "Rebel" Bello, a blue-collar legal advocate without a law degree—a funny, messy, brilliant and fearless woman who cares desperately about the causes she fights for and the people she loves.

ABC will not be moving forward with the Revenge spin-off it was developing for next year's 2020-2021 season. The new series would have followed the same blueprint the original established with Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp), but this time following a young Latinx immigrant, who would be "guided by one of the original series' favorite characters" to exact revenge on the people who murdered her mother. There was much speculation that tech mogul Nolan Ross (Gabriel Mann), Emily's main partner-in-crime in the original series, would have been been part of the new project and that the spin-off would be turned into an anthology series.

CBS’s action crime drama, Magnum P.I., starring Jay Hernandez, is targeting a mid-August tentative production start date for its upcoming third season. While a spike in coronavirus infections throughout the continental U.S. is raising doubts about production restart plans in COVID-19 hot spots like California and Georgia, sites like Hawaii have emerged as appealing alternatives, especially since Hawaii has the lowest rate of infection and death of any U.S. state.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone had a special episode, talking about the Locked Up Festival being held online in support of the Trussell Trust in the UK.

Crime Cafe host, Debbi Mack, interviewed crime writer Saralyn Richard about her Detective Oliver Parrott mystery series.


Writer Types guest co-host, Cheryl Head, joined Eric Beetner to chat with Steve Hockensmith (Holmes on the Range) and Sara Sligar (Take Me Apart).

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Cathi Stoler to talk about Bar None, the debut title in her "Murder on the Rocks" series.

Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover was joined by bestselling author Scott Turow to talk about his latest legal thriller, The Last Trial.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured a "Cozy Episode," highlighting three cozy mysteries they've enjoyed reading lately.

The Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine podcast featured a reading of Angela Zeman's intriguing, meaningful, and inventive historical story "The First Tale of Roxanne"; and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's podcast had author David Dean reading his moving and suspenseful tale, "The Duelist."

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

David Leitch (Deadpool 2; Hobbs & Shaw) has signed on to direct the thriller, Bullet Train, with another action-thriller veteran, Antoine Fuqua (director of the Equalizer movies starring Denzel Washington), on board as producer. Bullet Train, which is based on a popular Japanese manga, centers on a group of assassins with conflicting motives on a train in Tokyo. The film is a contained thriller, which means it can be shot on a contained set and thus fall in line easier under health restrictions than a more sprawling action movie with actual locations.

Vertical Entertainment has picked up North American rights to the mystery-thriller, Viscous, starring Mena Suvari (American Beauty). The film, from debut writer-director Braden R. Duemmler, follows a socially awkward teenager who is blindsided when her mother introduces her new fiancée. At first, his charm, intelligence, and beauty seem too good to be true, and after a series of strange occurrences the teenage daughter realizes that this new member of their family is not exactly who he seems.

Gerard Butler is set to star in the action film, Kandahar, with Ric Roman Waugh directing. (Butler and Waugh also teamed up last year on the hit action pic Angel Has Fallen). Waugh will direct from a screenplay he wrote with former military intelligence officer Mitchell LaFortune. In the film, Butler will play Tom Harris, an undercover CIA operative working in the Middle East. An intelligence leak dangerously exposes his classified mission and reveals his covert identity. Stuck in the heart of hostile territory, Harris and his translator must fight their way out of the desert to an extraction point in Kandahar, Afghanistan, while eluding the elite special forces hunting them.

The Mickey Rourke, Sean Stone, and Eric Roberts crime drama, Night Walk, has secured North American distribution. Directed and produced by Moroccan-born filmmaker Aziz Tazi, Night Walk follows Frank (played by Oliver Stone’s son, Sean Stone), a Western traveler visiting the Middle East, where his girlfriend Sarah lives. After a tragic incident leading to Sarah’s death, Frank is wrongfully imprisoned by corrupt police, and under the guidance of the prison’s top shot-caller (Mickey Rourke) and the protection of his Muslim cellmate, he unravels political corruption at the top seats of government in his quest for justice.

Aneurin Barnard (Dunkirk) has been cast opposite Alex Pettyfer (Magic Mike) in the thriller, Hunters In The Dark, with veteran theater director, Simon Evans, making his feature filmmaking debut. The project tells the story of 28-year-old English school teacher, Robert Grieve (Pettyfer), who unexpectedly wins a bag full of cash. Adrift in Cambodia and eager for a way out of his life of quiet desperation, he decides to take a journey deeper into the wilder aspects of the country, coming up against a scheming American, a crooked police officer, and a darker side of Cambodia.

Saban Films has bought North American and UK rights to Jared Cohn’s Reactor starring Bruce Willis as the leader of a gang of mercenaries holding a nuclear power plant hostage. Casting is underway for the lead role, a former soldier who takes down Willis and his crew. Cohn wrote the script with Cam Cannon and Stephen Cyrus Sepher.

The estate of Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is suing Netflix, Legendary Films, and author Nancy Springer over copyright and trademark issues associated with the upcoming film, Enola Homes. The suit claims that, despite most of the original pre-1923 Sherlock Holmes tales having been judged to be in the public domain, the author’s last 10 stories about the character — published between 1923 and 1927 — are not. The movie stars Millie Bobby Brown as the much-younger sister of Sherlock Holmes, who proves to be a highly capable detective in her own right. Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Sam Claflin, Fiona Shaw, and Adeel Akhtar also star in the film that is set to stream on Netflix.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Langdon, the NBC series based on Dan Brown’s novel, The Lost Symbol, has added to its cast. Sumalee Montano (Star Trek: Picard), Arrow alum Rick Gonzalez, and Beau Knapp (The Good Lord Bird) are set as series regulars opposite Ashley Zukerman. Written by Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie, Langdon follows the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Zukerman), who must solve a series of deadly puzzles to save his kidnapped mentor and thwart a chilling global conspiracy. The project, which hails from Imagine Television, CBS TV Studios and Universal Television, is among five 2020 pilots which NBC has committed to filming later this year, once production can safely begin amid coronavirus restrictions.

ViacomCBS International Studios and Miramax will co-produce The Turkish Detective, a crime series set in modern-day Istanbul based on the 21 inspector Cetin Ikmen novels by Barbara Nadel. Each episode "follows Ikmen and his partner Mehmet Suleyman as they solve a series of crimes, with the stories heavily rooted in the rich culture and history of Istanbul."

AMC will air the British drama, Gangs of London, in the U.S. after HBO’s Cinemax exited the project, which has been renewed for a second season. The ten-part show was a big hit for Sky in the UK, becoming its biggest premiere streaming series this year and the biggest original drama launch on Sky Atlantic in the past five years.

Turner networks TNT and TBS have put four projects in development including The Fall and Liar's Club. The Fall is a paranoid thriller about a woman whose dark secrets start to unravel her seemingly perfect life and is inspired by the Albert Camus tale of the same name. Liar's Club is described as "part comedy, part pulp thriller" or "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel meets Breaking Bad." it follows a woman leading two very different lives, one adorned in the trappings of Connecticut country clubs, and the other drenched in the murkiness of the underground gambling circuit in NYC.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the mystery short story "Vengeance in Cadmium Blue" by Margaret Mendel as read by actor Ariel Linn.

Writer Types host, Eric Beetner, talked with authors Michael Elias (You Can Go Home Now); Jennifer Chow (Mimi Lee Gets A Clue); and Richard Prosch (the Dan Spalding series).

Michael Elias was also the guest on Speaking of Mysteries to discuss You Can Go Home Now, a psychological thriller where a woman cop is on the hunt for a killer while battling violent secrets of her own.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Marc Cameron, author of the New York Times bestselling Jericho Quinn Thriller series.

Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, discussed the role SWAT plays in an investigation after they’ve busted the suspect; what a witness or visitor to an FBI Office might see; and what the cocaine production process looks like.

Casey Cep, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was the guest on It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club, chatting about her first book, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, an instant New York Times bestseller.

THEATRE

Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code, is being adapted for the theatre for the first time, and is set to premiere on April 3, 2021 at the Churchill theatre in Bromley, London, under the direction of Luke Sheppard. The stageplay, which involves the murder of the Louvre’s curator and the race to solve a series of baffling codes left beside his body, is being written by the same team who adapted The Girl on the Train for the stage, Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel.

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Director Joshua Caldwell, whose Bella Thorne crime feature Infamous recently debuted on VOD and drive-ins, has optioned Kyle Rutkin’s psychological thriller novel, She Died Famous, as his next feature. Described as akin to A Star Is Born crossed with Gone Girl, the story follows the death of iconic superstar, Kelly Trozzo, her suspected killer, and the author she commissioned to pen her shocking Hollywood memoir. Caldwell called it "a mind-bending trip into the world of tabloid, murder, and celebrity."

Elijah Wood is to star as Ted Bundy’s FBI analyst in the crime-thriller, No Man Of God. Set largely in a single interrogation room, the film is based on real life transcripts culled from conversations between FBI analyst, Bill Hagmaier (Wood), and serial killer Bundy that took place between 1984 and 1989. The film details the complicated relationship that formed between the two men during Bundy’s final years on death row.

Baby Driver director Edgar Wright will helm a big-screen adaptation of The Chain, based on Adrian McKinty’s 2019 novel. The story follows a mother who gets a call from a stranger that her 11-year-old daughter has been kidnapped, and the only way she can keep her child alive is by kidnapping another child within 24 hours as part of a sinister chain of abductions. Jane Goldman (Kingsman: The Golden Circle) will write the script based on McKinty’s book.

Another Baby Driver player, Lily James, is set to star in The Paris Trap, a thriller directed by Pablo Trapero. The Hitchcockian thriller revolves around a young American woman on a visit to Paris who becomes the victim of mistaken identity. Caught up in a secret international government operation, she must play the part to save her own life.

Neal McDonough (Yellowstone, Project Blue Book) has signed on to star in Red Stone, an indie thriller written and directed by Derek Presley. The story follows Motley (Dash Melrose), whose life spirals out of control as he’s forced to go on the run from southern crime lord, Jed Haywood (Michael Cudlitz). Boon (McDonough), Haywood’s best henchman and close friend, is tracking Motley, and over the course of one day, both Motley and Boon go on a spiritual journey as their fate brings them together for a showdown.

Antoine Fuqua has been hired to direct Will Smith in Emancipation, an action-thriller penned by Willam N. Collage about the harrowing escape of Peter, a runaway slave forced to outwit cold-blooded hunters and the unforgiving swamps of Louisiana on a tortuous journey north to join the Union Army. The thriller is based on a true story that solidified the cause of abolitionists and prompted many free blacks to also join the Union Army.

Oscar Isaac is set to star in and produce the next film from director Ben Stiller, titled London. Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, A Star Is Born) is adapting the screenplay for London based on "a new short story/high-concept thriller" from crime author Jo Nesbø, though details about the plot are being kept under wraps. 

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Apple TV+ has come aboard the Israel-Iran espionage thriller, Tehran, taking the international rights to the series outside of Israel. The eight-part series features young Israeli actress Niv Sultan as Tamar Rabinyan, a Mossad computer hacker-agent undertaking her very first mission in Iran’s capital, which is also her place of birth. Tasked with disabling an Iranian nuclear reactor, her mission has implications not just for the Middle East, but for the rest of the world. But when the Mossad mission fails, Tamar goes rogue in Tehran as she rediscovers her Iranian roots and becomes romantically entwined with a pro-democracy activist.


NBC has cancelled more programs including Bluff City Law, which starred Jimmy Smits as a civil rights lawyer and ran for ten episodes. It's among the latest cancellations at NBC, which earlier this month also axed Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector, a series based on the crime novels of Jeffery Deaver.

Another legal drama suffered a happier fate, with ABC renewing its freshman series, For Life, for a second season. Created by Hank Steinberg and produced by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, For Life is a fictional serialized legal and family drama about an imprisoned man, Aaron Wallace, who becomes a lawyer litigating cases for other inmates while fighting to overturn his own life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. It is inspired by the life of Isaac Wright Jr., who was wrongfully convicted as drug kingpin but got his conviction overturned while in prison and became a licensed attorney.

Alex Rider, Eleventh Hour Films’ TV adaptation of Anthony Horowitz’s best-selling teen spy novels and starring Otto Farrant, is heading for a second season after the first season was picked up by Amazon in the UK. Producers have also said that the show, which was penned by Guy Burt (Bletchley Circle), is close to finding a home in the U.S., Australia, and China after the 12 books on which it is based sold more than 20M copies worldwide. Stephen Dillane and Vicky McClure also feature in the series as members of The Department, an underworld offshoot of MI6.

The CW has acquired four more series to debut this summer and has also nailed down the rest of its summer premiere dates. Among the new series is a whodunnit competition reality series, titled Killer Camp, which debuts July 16. The Investigative drama, Coroner, will also have its U.S. premiere on August 5.

NBC announced its fall schedule, lining up Christopher Meloni’s new Law & Order spinoff for a Thursday debut. Titled Law & Order: Organized Crime, the new drama will be led by Meloni reprising his role as Elliot Stabler and will air Thursday nights at 10 pm, following the 22nd season of SVU at 9. Many of the returning crime drama series will keep their previous year's slots, including the "Chicago trio" of series on Wednesdays.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone welcomed author Alex North, bestselling author of The Whisper Man, to talk about garden centres; social media; the Russo brothers optioning his book; "being two people," and more.

Writer Types host, Eric Beetner, chatted with Scottish author Peter May (Lockdown), mystery author Jill Orr (The Full Scoop), and SW Lauden (Good Girls Don't).

Read or Dead hosts, Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham, discussed new award nominees that have been recently announced and picked out books featuring LGBTQ+ characters for Pride Month.

The latest guest on Speaking of Mysteries was Craig Robertson. He discussed his new novel, Watch Him Die, in which someone from Glasgow is watching someone else dying on a live video stream in Los Angeles, prompting police departments in both cities to find out where the victim is—and who is watching.

Beyond the Cover welcomed author Lori Radar-Day to talk about her latest book, The Lucky One.

Write Place, Wrong Crime had its Season 3 finale In which host Frank Zafiro and Colin Conway talked about their new book, Never the Crime (a Charlie-316 novel), the impending release of the rest of the books in that story arc by year's end, and also included a discussion about world-building and writing yourself into a corner.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club chatted with Montreal-based author Liz Freeland about An Orphan of Hell's Kitchen, the third in the Louise Faulk Mystery Series.

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Baby Driver star Lily James is set to headline director Phillip Noyce's film, Peggy Jo. James will play Peggy Jo Tallas, a real-life Texan who took to robbing banks while posing as a man. The story is "loosely based" on the true story account and was adapted for the screen by Appaloosa writer Robert Knott. The film project is described as a playful take on the films of the ’70s and ’80s and will specifically be filled with references to George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a film that the character Peggy Jo Tallas grew up admiring and inspired her to assume her famous alter-ego "Cowboy Bob" and begin robbing banks.

Olivia Munn is attached to star in the action feature, Replay, which will be introduced to buyers at this year's Cannes Virtual Marché, part of the "virtual" Cannes Film Festival that will take place instead of an on-site event due to Covid-19. Written and directed by Jimmy Loweree (Absence), Replay is the story of Erin Staffer, (Munn), whose husband is kidnapped and murdered. Now, armed only with illegal, bleeding-edge tech and a desperate plan, Erin must do everything in her power to change the past and save him.

Universal and Blumhouse are taking their Kevin Bacon-Amanda Seyfried psychological thriller, You Should Have Left, straight into homes on Friday, June 19 for a North American video-on-demand release. The pic was directed by Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible scribe David Koepp which he adapted from the German novel by Daniel Kehlmann. Bacon and Seyfried star as a couple seeking a restful vacation on an isolated edge of the world in the Welsh countryside. At first their vacation with their six-year-old daughter seems like a perfect retreat, but distorts into a perfect nightmare when Theo’s (Bacon) grasp on reality begins to unravel and he suspects that a sinister force within the house knows more than he or Susanna (Seyfried) have revealed, even to each other. You can check out the trailer via the above link.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The U.K. production firm Castlefield has acquired the TV rights to Cara Hunter's bestselling crime novels featuring Detective Inspector Adam Fawley. Although the company has yet to find a home for the adaptation, it's planning the series around Hunter's four books, with each novel following DI Fawley as he investigates a domestic tragedy or crime that demands answers from the victim’s family and friends. In the first book, Close To Home, he looks into the disappearance of an eight-year-old girl from a family party.

The long-running docuseries, Cops, is ending its run on Paramount Network in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. The show premiered on Fox in 1989 and aired for 25 seasons then was resurrected in 2013 when Spike TV (since rebranded as Paramount Network) ordered new episodes. Likewise, A&E on June 5 pulled episodes of its hit docuseries Live PD due to the civil protests and a report that the March 2019 death of Javier Ambler during a police stop was allegedly captured by the Live PD crew but the video was destroyed.

Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector will not be returning to NBC. The show, which launched in January, ran for 10 episodes and is based on Jeffrey Deaver’s Bone Collector book series. It starred Russell Hornsby as Lincoln Rhyme, a brilliant but hardheaded forensic criminologist who suffers near-fatal injuries while on the job, leaving him a tetraplegic. He nevertheless continues his work remotely, working with others to solve cases. It also starred Arielle Kebbel, Roslyn Ruff, Ramses Jimenez, Brooke Lyons, Tate Ellington, Brian F. O’Byrne, Courtney Grosbeck, and Michael Imperioli.

Also canceled was Hulu's femme fatale thriller, Reprisal, which won't return for a second season. Reprisal is a hyper-kinetic revenge tale following a relentless femme fatale (Abigail Spencer) who, after being left for dead, leads a vengeful campaign against a bombastic gang of gearheads. The show also starred Rodrigo Santoro, Mena Massoud, Madison Davenport, Rhys Wakefield, David Dastmalchian, W. Earl Brown, and Gilbert Owuor.

HBO has released the trailer for I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, its six-part documentary series about the hunt for the Golden State Killer undertaken by crime writer Michelle McNamara. Episode 1 debuts June 28 at 10 PM and new episodes debut each subsequent Sunday.


PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Author Faye Snowden joined Eric Beetner for co hosting duties on Writer Types as they talked with writers Nikki Dolson (Love and other Criminal Behavior) and Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indians). Plus the Book People bookstore in Austin, Texas, had some staff picks to share.

Beyond The Cover chatted with bestselling author C.J. Tudor as she discussed her latest book, The Other People. Tudor is also the author of The Chalk Man, which won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel and the Strand Magazine Award for Best Debut Novel.

Meet the Thriller Author spoke with T.R. Ragan (Theresa Ragan) about her writing process; the publishing industry; her Lizzy Gardner series; her new book in a new series, Don’t Make A Sound; and much more.

The latest Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast featured the first chapter of Death Over Easy by Maddie Day a/k/a Edith Maxwell, read by actor Julia Reimer

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Tom Pitts to talk about his latest thriller, Coldwater.

My Favorite Detective Stories chatted with Michael Koryta, a former newspaper reporter and private investigator whose work has been translated into more than 20 languages and has won or been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Edgar Award, Shamus Award, Barry Award, Quill Award, International Thriller Writers Award, and the Golden Dagger.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club welcomed Laurie R. King to talk about Riviera Gold, the 16th in her series featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes.

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

During the Covid-19 pandemic and social-distancing, drive-in movie theaters have made something of a comeback. Now, Vertical Entertainment will premiere the Bella Thorne action-crime thriller, Infamous, in close to three dozen drive-ins on the East Coast, in the Midwest, and in the South. The film will also be available in digital virtual cinemas, all starting on Friday, June 12. Thorne plays Arielle, a young woman who lives in a small Florida town, stuck in a diner job. Arielle has always wanted more: fame, popularity and admiration. But when she falls for a recently paroled young criminal named Dean, she drags him back into a life of danger, learning that posting their criminal exploits on social media is an easy way to viral fame. They embark on a dangerous adventure together that leads to robbery, cop chases, and murder.

Quiver Distribution has secured the North American distribution rights to Money Plane, the Andrew Lawrence-helmed action-thriller starring WWE Superstar Adam "Edge" Copeland, Denise Richards, Thomas Jane, and Emmy award winner Kelsey Grammer. Co-written by Lawrence and Tim Schaaf, the film will debut on digital platforms on July 10. The plot follows Jack Reese (Copeland), a professional thief who’s $40 million in debt. Underworld kingpin Darius Emmanuel Grouch (Grammer) offers to forgive his debt if Reese will commit one final heist – rob a futuristic airborne casino filled with the world’s most dangerous criminals. If he fails, his family’s lives are on the line.

Mission: Impossible 7 is preparing to resume filming in September after the Paramount feature was forced to radically change its shooting plans in February because of the coronavirus pandemic. First assistant director Tommy Gormley said, "We hope to restart in September, we hope to visit all the countries we planned to and look to do a big chunk of it back in the UK on the backlot and in the studio..." Gormley added that it would not be without significant challenges given the scale of the shoot, its multiple locations, and giant crew, but added that it will be possible if "we break down all the procedures very carefully."

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced the list of nominees for its annual BAFTA Awards. Among the crime show nods were a Best Drama Series nomination for Giri/Haji, a thriller set in Tokyo and London that explores the butterfly effect of a single murder across two cities; International Award nominations for When They See Us, based on the real-life case of the Central Park Five, and Unbelievable, about a series of rapes in Washington State and Colorado; Best Dramatic Actor nods for Callum Turner (The Capture) and Takehiro Hira (Giri/Haji); and Best Dramatic Actress nominations for Glenda Jackson (Elizabeth is Missing) and Jodie Comer (Killing Eve). Also nominated were A Confession and The Victim in the Best Mini-Series category.

The BBC has commissioned a second season of the spy drama, The Capture. The surveillance thriller, which will premiere on NBCUniversal streamer Peacock in the U.S. on July 15, was a hit in the UK, becoming BBC iPlayer’s biggest new title of 2019. Season 1 began with the unjust arrest of an innocent man (Callum Turner) and escalated into a multi-layered conspiracy of manipulated evidence. Holliday Grainger’s Detective Inspector Rachel Carey is drafted in to investigate the case and she quickly learns that the truth can sometimes be a matter of perspective. Grainger returns as Carey for the six-part second season, with events picking up from the end of Season 1 when the detective seemingly joined forces with a shadowy correction team she had previously sought to expose.

The CW has acquired an Italian thriller series starring Patrick Dempsey and is shifting around its previously announced 2020-21 broadcast season schedule to accommodate it. Devils is based on the novel, I Diavoli by Guido Maria Brera, and is set in the London office of a major U.S. bank, where the ruthless Head of Trading, Massimo Ruggero (Alessandro Borghi) from Italy, has been welcomed and introduced to the world of finance by Dominic Morgan (Dempsey), the bank’s CEO. When Ruggero ends up involved in an intercontinental financial war rocking Europe, he has to choose whether to ally himself with his mentor or fight him. The book was partly inspired by the financial crisis that swept global markets in 2008.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham talked about the new James Patterson and Bill Clinton book; a new Lisbeth Salander adaptation; and mystery short story collections.

Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover welcomed bestselling author Greg Hurwitz to discuss his Orphan X series and his latest book, Into The Fire.

This week's guest on Meet the Thriller Author was Barbara Nickless, whose latest book is Gone to Darkness, the fourth installment in her bestselling Sydney Rose Parnell book series.

Barbara Nickless also stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime, chatting about her "many and varied pursuits."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club welcomed Elly Griffiths to chat about her forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway novels that are inspired by Elly's husband, who gave up a city job to train as an archaeologist.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's Fiction Podcast turned its attention to poetry for the latest episode. EQMM has a long history of including occasional poems, from humorous limericks to serious free verse, since poetry gives another lens through which to view the crime and mystery genre. Included in the show are a story in epic verse by John F. Dobbyn and poems by James Sallis, Stephen D. Rogers, Kevin Mims, Marilyn Todd, John V. Mercurio, and more.

For the final episode of the first series of The Tartan Noir Show, Peter May joined host Theresa Talbot from his home in France. He spoke about his brand new book, Lockdown, written 15 years ago about a global pandemic which closes down London; about digging deep in writing; the importance of research; and about his best-selling Lewis Trilogy, his China Thrillers series, and the Enzo Files series.

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Alec Baldwin has signed on to produce and star in the crime-western feature film, Rust. The project is based on a story by Baldwin and Crown Vic helmer Joel Souza, who will write the screenplay and direct. The plot follows infamous western outlaw Harland Rust (Baldwin), who has had a bounty on his head for as long as he can remember. When his estranged 13-year-old grandson Lucas is convicted of an accidental murder and sentenced to hang, Rust travels to Kansas to break him out of prison. Together, the two fugitives must outrun legendary U.S. Marshal, Wood Helm, and bounty-hunter, Fenton "Preacher" Lang, who are hot on their trail.

Director Daniel Espinosa has boarded the drama, The Execution. The film follows the events leading up to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian-born dissident and Washington Post columnist who was killed and dismembered by a Saudi hit team after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to get a marriage license.

Director Babak Najafi has been hired to direct Anna, an inspirational true political thriller about journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s brave crusade fighting for an independent voice in Putin’s Russia. In 2006, Politkovskaya was murdered in the elevator of her block of flats, an assassination that attracted international attention.

Ridley Scott will executive produce a thriller called Panopticon, with Andrés Baiz (Narcos) directing from a script by Emily Jerome. The movie will follow rising female hedge fund manager, "Chase," who decides to invest in an Arizona based private prison system that racks up huge profits. But on a tour of the prison, Chase realizes that the inmates are running the show, and she starts a dangerous game as she tries to fix things in order to save the jackpot she’s reaping for herself and her firm.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Amazon has put in development Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a series revolving around the Lisbeth Salander character based on the books by Stieg Larsson. The project will be a co-production between Amazon Studios and Left Bank Pictures, in association with Sony Pictures TV. Based on the Larsson books, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will take the iconic and much-loved character Lisbeth Salander and place her in today’s world with a new setting, new characters, and a new story "that will resonate with fans of the original and thrill a whole new generation."

BBC picked up the Danish crime series, DNA from The Killing co-creator, Torleif Hoppe. In the eight-part series, Rolf Larsen (played by Anders W. Berthelsen), a respected detective on the Copenhagen police force, has his life brutally upended when his baby daughter goes missing. Five years after the tragedy, a new lead emerges when a serious flaw is discovered in the Danish police’s DNA database. Realizing that his daughter may still be alive, Rolf tries to find out what really happened to her by investigating a parallel case with ties to an international child-trafficking ring. Rolf gets a helping hand from Claire (Charlotte Rampling), a seasoned French investigator working on a similar case.

A sixth season of Lucifer is moving closer to reality on Netflix after star Tom Ellis closed a deal to return as the title character. Netflix earlier this year started talks with series producer Warner Brothers TV about another installment of the supernatural police drama beyond the upcoming fifth season, which had originally been billed as a final installment. The rest of the cast are also on board, according to Deadline.

The New York Times profiled actor Matthew Rhys, star of the upcoming Perry Mason origin-story series on HBO. Rhys explained that when he first learned of a planned Perry Mason remake, he had one question: "Oh God, why?" But Rhys, who played a Soviet sleeper agent in the FX espionage drama, The Americans, was drawn to the script which features a bleak and occasionally comic version, set in Depression-era Los Angeles. Unbathed, gin-soaked, and allergic to a close shave, Rhys’s Perry gets his gut punched, his chest burned, and his butt kicked. But as Rhys notes, "I wanted to know how this guy gets to the Perry Mason that we all think we know and love."

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Reed Farrel Coleman to share his experiences in writing Robert P. Parker's Jesse Stone series. He also gave a quick overview of his other series protagonists, Joseph Serpe, Gus Murphy, Gulliver Dowd, Dylan Klein, and Moe Prager, and discussed fellow author, Lawrence Block.

The latest Mysteryrat's Maze podcast is up, featuring an excerpt from The Wrong Girl by Donis Casey, as read by actors Maxwell Debbas and Brianne Vogt Debbas.

On the All About Agatha podcast, Ruth Ware, author of five bestselling psychological crime thrillers, stopped by to chat about her books and her appreciation for Agatha Christie.

Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover welcomed Kay Hooper, author of over sixty books who is best known for her "Bishop / Special Crimes Unit" series.

The featured guest on Speaking of Mysteries was Paul D. Marks, discussing his latest, The Blues Don't Care, featuring a young jazz pianist with a secret in World War II-era Los Angeles.

Meet the Thriller Author focused on Scott Carson, a/k/a Michael Koryta, a New York Times bestselling author and screenwriter who currently lives in New England.

Lori Rader-Day stopped by It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club to discuss her latest crime novel, The Lucky One.

The Tartan Noir Show was joined by Denise Mina to talk about her twenty years writing about Glasgow. There was also discussion about representation of the working class in crime fiction, Edgar Allan Poe (who went to school in Ayrshire), and the appeal of true crime.

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Sony Pictures has acquired Armored, a film adaptation of the new audio book written by Mark Greaney (co-author of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels), with Michael Bay producing. The novel focuses on a high-risk security contractor suffering from old physical and mental wounds who reluctantly takes a job working on a heavily armed convoy shuttling UN delegates through Mexico’s "cartel country." But the mission turns into a desperate struggle for survival as corrupt police, rival gangs, and an enemy within all try to destroy the tiny motorcade before the peace talks bear fruit.

Paramount Pictures has boarded Flight, a film based on a spec script by Miles Chapman, the screenwriter behind the Sylvester Stallone-led Escape Plan movies. Piloted by producer Weed Road Pictures (Star Trek: Picard) and director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down), the story is described as "a contained thriller set on an international flight."

Nick Jonas (Jumanji) and Laurence Fishburne (Matrix) have signed on to star in the Pierre Morel-directed action-thriller, The Blacksmith. Actor-singer Jonas will play Wes Loomis, a "Blacksmith," the intelligence community’s go-to weapons expert. When his clandestine lab is destroyed and his colleagues are murdered, he must go on the run with only his unique set of technological skills and the help of a brilliant, young CIA analyst to keep him alive. The duo seek out Mather (Fishburne), a retired blacksmith and Wes’s mentor, to help guide them.

Esai Morales will replace Nicholas Hoult as the villain in Mission: Impossible 7, which is due to start production in late summer or early fall. When the coronavirus shut down the original production schedules on the film, it conflicted with another commitment for Hoult, and thus Morales had to be brought on board instead. The project, which sees Tom Cruise reprising his Ethan Hunt spy character, was set to be released in July 2021 but has since been rescheduled for November of next year.

After the wild success of Netflix's Tiger King documentary series, based on the exploits of convicted felon, Joe Exotic, several follow-on scripted projects about the same story and characters are being eyed by various TV and film producers. Although most of these are in the early stages, one such production is eyeing Sharknado star Tara Reid to play Carole Baskin, the big cat conservationist with whom Exotic had a bitter feud.

The mysterious Tenet film from Christopher Nolan has a new trailer that may reveal more about the project. The sci-fi crime drama stars John David Washington as the protagonist who is leading a group to track down Kenneth Branagh’s character, a Russian national who’s able to communicate with the future and appears to be a formidable opponent

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Deadline is reporting that Left Bank Pictures (The Crown) is closing a deal to adapt Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache crime novels for a series. However, the author herself on Facebook had this to say about the report:  "To be honest, that was premature. The discussions are ongoing and as I've learned, all sorts of things can go wrong." According to Deadline, the project's title is Three Pines, which would be a reference to the fictional French Canadian village in which Chief Inspector Gamache operates. The lead character is a French-speaking detective, but I'm assuming the production would look to hire a bilingual actor since Gamache also has English fluency (thanks to his Cambridge education). Chief Inspector Gamache has been reimagined for the screen previously: Canada’s CBC adapted Still Life for the 2013 television movie Still Life: A Three Pines Mystery, with Nathaniel Parker playing the fictional detective.

CBS announced its fall TV lineup, which includes most of its regular crime drama offerings as well as the new crime shows, The Equalizer and Clarice (in a mid-season slot TBA). CBS is planning to bring back the shows despite the ongoing production shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic. However, CBS Entertainment president, Kelly Kahl, did not rule out the possibility that CBS could make changes should the network’s shows fail to restart production in time for fall launches. Fox and The CW are changing up their lineups with acquired series and other stopgaps in the event full-scale production is unable to resume any time soon.

ABC also announced a slew of renewals including The Rookie (starring Nathan Fillion as the titular rookie cop) and Stumptown (starring Cobie Smulders as a military intelligence veteran turned private eye). The network also picked up the new detective drama, Big Sky, from the prolific David E. Kelley, and a drama based on Erin Brockovich, Rebel, may also go forward at a later day. One show that was canceled is Emergence. The supernatural police drama starred Allison Tollman as a police chief who takes in a young child that she finds near the site of a mysterious accident who has no memory of what has happened.

Fox picked up the serial killer thriller, Prodigal Son, for a second season. The project, which stars Michael Sheen and Tom Payne, is likely to be scheduled for a midseason slot as a result of the COVID-19 production shutdown. Prodigal Son follows Tom Payne’s Malcolm Bright, son of "The Surgeon" (played by Sheen), who as a child was responsible for enabling the police to arrest his serial-killer father. Now a profiler, formerly with the FBI and currently consulting for the New York Police Department, Bright is forced to confront his father after a copycat serial killer uses his methods of killing.

TNT has set the premiere date (July 26) and released a trailer for its follow-up to The Alienist, which will officially be titled The Alienist: Angel of Darkness. The initial series and the follow-on are based on Caleb Carr's series about a turn-of-the-century criminal psychologist (known as “alienists” in those days). The entire lead cast from the first project will return, including Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning.

Harry Potter producer, David Barron, is adapting Manda Scott's thriller novel, Treachery of Spies, for the small screen. The historical thriller starts with a murder in WWII France and unfurls its mysteries into the present day with a brilliant but haunted female detective as the lead. A Treachery of Spies is the second of Scott’s espionage thrillers to feature Detective Inspector Inès Picaut and the first to be adapted.

Olivia Holt (of Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger) is returning to Freeform as a lead in Cruel Summer, the network’s upcoming thriller drama series, taking over a role originally played in the pilot by Mika Abdalla. Cruel Summer (previously titled Last Summer) is described as an unconventional thriller that takes place over three summers in the '90s in a small Texas town when a beautiful popular teen, Kate (Holt), is abducted.

While you're waiting for your favorite crime dramas to return, TV Guide has spoilers, premiere dates, photos, trailers, and casting news for season 18 of NCIS and season 7 of NCIS: New Orleans.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Poisoned Pen Bookstore's Barbara Peters has regular conversations with authors, linked on the store's website. Among the latest are the sisters Liz and Valerie Constantine who write as Liv Constantine; Kate White; Ian Rankin; Hank Phillipi Ryan; Angie Kim; Scott Turow; and C.J. Box.

Crime Cafe host, Debbi Mack, chatted with Jeffery Deaver, bestselling author of thirty-five novels, including the Lincoln Rhyme series.

Writer Types host, Eric Beetner, spoke with authors Kimberly McCreight (A Good Marriage); Tom Pitts (Cold Water); and Mary Keliikoa (Derailed).

The hosts of the Read or Dead podcast, Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham, talked about Jane Harper’s new novel; the French serial killer expert who apparently isn’t an expert; and books featuring religious elements that are not by Dan Brown.

Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover welcomed back physician and author, Dr. D.P. Lyle, about his writing and his latest book, Rigged.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Andrews & Wilson, the bestselling co-author team of several covert ops and action-adventure thriller books in the Tier One series and other books. Brian Andrews is a US Navy veteran and former submarine officer, and fellow Navy vet Jeffrey Wilson has worked as an actor, firefighter, paramedic, jet pilot, and diving instructor, as well as a vascular and trauma surgeon.

Robin Burcell stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss being the first female cop in her department; her experiences as a hostage negotiator and a forensic artist; her early novels; her collaboration with Clive Cussler; and what's next for her.

Writers Detective Bureau talked about who investigates the murder when the victim is a police officer of your own agency; how to best secure realistic props for filming; and tips for creating realistic testimony dialogue.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club chatted with Sara Paretsky, best known for her groundbreaking series with female private eye, V.I. Warshawski.

The Tartan Noir Show sat down with Abir Mukherjee, recently nominated for the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year for his third Sam Wyndham novel, Smoke and Ashes, set in the Raj era of India.

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt production around the world, Enderby Entertainment has begun work on a feature film to be produced and shot virtually in six countries. Titled 92, the thriller project is led by Veronica Ferres and Aleks Paunovic in the ensemble cast and follows five characters connected only by their devotion to the late tech titan Finley Hart. Operating from bases around the world, the quintet must work together to shut down Hart’s most secret invention – a machine that is either the solution of mankind’s problems or the end of life on Earth. Producer Rick Dugdale will remotely supervise the virtual shoot in each country with the actors’ own homes serving as the set.

Call Me By Your Name Oscar nominee Luca Guadagnino is set to direct Universal Pictures’s "reimagination" of Scarface. In the original 1932 film, an Italian gangster (Paul Muni) took over Chicago, while in the iconic 1983 movie, Al Pacino starred as a Cuban gangster who cornered the cocaine trade in 1980s Miami. The new movie will be set in Los Angeles, although other project details are still being developed. The project's shooting script will be from Joel Coen and Ethan Coen’s version, who’ve been with the long-simmering project for at least three years (with earlier drafts by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, Jonathan Herman, and Paul Attanasio).

Until recently, it was looking like Christopher Nolan's movie, Tenet, was set to be the first film to screen in reopened theaters, but now it seems that Russell Crowe's Unhinged will beat it by two weeks (provided that either one is able to open in July). The psychological thriller centers around a terrifying cat-and-mouse chase between Crowe’s character, an unnamed stranger, and a woman named Rachel (Caren Pistorius), who provokes the stranger’s ire when trying to get around him in a traffic jam.

In more Russell Crowe news, it was announced the actor will headline the mob thriller, American Son. Based on Jacques Audiard’s French movie, A Prophet, American Son will be directed by Andrew "Rapman" Onwubolu, with Dennis Lehane writing the screenplay. The story follows a man who builds a multiracial crime syndicate after falling under the control of a mobster (Crowe). He takes down his mentor and earns a spot alongside the Italian and Russian mafias.

In a seven-figure deal, Netflix has acquired Our Man From Jersey, a star vehicle for Mark Wahlberg to be scripted by writer David Guggenheim (Safe House). Described as "a blue collar 007," the film will be produced by Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson, who hatched the idea.

The Tax Collector, the gritty David Ayer-directed drama, has found a home via the AMC Networks division RLJE, with an expected release date in August. Scripted and directed by Ayer, the project centers on David (Bobby Soto) and Creeper (Shia LaBeouf), who are "tax collectors" for the crime lord, Wizard, collecting his cut from the profits of local gangs’ illicit dealings. But when Wizard’s old rival returns to Los Angeles from Mexico, the business is upended, and David finds himself desperate to protect what matters more to him than anything else: his family.

Vertical Entertainment has acquired the North American distribution rights to the Bella Thorne feature, Infamous, with a virtual cinema and VOD release date of June 12. Written and directed by Joshua Caldwell, the film stars Thorne as Arielle, a young woman who lives in a small Florida town, stuck in a diner job. When she falls for a recently paroled young criminal named Dean (Jake Manley), she drags him back into a life of danger, learning that posting their criminal exploits on social media is an easy way to viral fame. They embark on a dangerous adventure together that leads to robbery, cop chases, and murder.

Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. distribution rights to The Secrets We Keep, the period revenge thriller directed by Yuval Adler that stars Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, and Chris Messina. Rapace plays Maja, a woman rebuilding her life along with her husband, Lewis (Messina), in America after World War II. One day she encounters an eerily familiar figure (Kinnaman) from her past life – but is he really the man she thinks he is? Convinced he is, Maja takes things into her own hands and kidnaps him, setting in motion a series of memories and events that will change her whole perception of the truth.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

BritBox says it is going to house "the most comprehensive" collection of Agatha Christie adaptations in North America after inking a deal with the estate of the British author. The streaming service, which is operated by ITV and the BBC, has acquired further rights to films, TV series, and audio plays—including Seasons 9-12 of David Suchet’s depiction of legendary detective Poirot, meaning BritBox will eventually be the home to all-but-one series of the ITV show. BritBox will also add newly restored versions of ITV’s Marple and Partners In Crime, as well as TV movies such as The Seven Dials Mystery and The Secret Adversary.

The Inspector Ghote Indian detective novels are heading for series treatment through Endemol Shine India. The company has optioned the rights to the much-loved series of 25 novels written by journalist turned novelist H.R.F. Keating over a 45-year period and intends to develop them as a multi-part returnable series. No details are yet available about the series development schedule, talent attachments or broadcast partners. Introduced in the 1964 novel, The Perfect Murder, the books feature Ganesh V. Ghote as a middle-aged, married inspector in the Mumbai police force. A dogged crimefighter who is often under-estimated by society, Ghote spends almost as much time combatting bureaucracy as he does cracking cases.

Amazon Prime Video has secured UK rights to Alex Rider, a new spy thriller series based on Point Blanc, the second novel in Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series. Alex Rider will premiere on Prime Video in the UK on June 4, with all eight episodes available for UK Prime members to stream. Otto Farrant will star as Alex Rider, who is a teenager trained since childhood for the world of espionage. Rider is pressured to help investigate he is uncle's death and how it connects to the assassination of two high-profile billionaires.

The CW has given a straight-to-series order for Kung Fu, starring Olivia Liang. A life crisis causes a young Chinese-American woman to drop out of college and go on a life-changing journey to an isolated monastery in China. But when she returns to find her hometown overrun with crime and corruption, she uses her martial arts skills and Shaolin values to protect her community and bring criminals to justice…all while searching for the assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor and is now targeting her.

Fans of Supernatural's Jared Padalecki are going to have to wait a little longer for his new show, a reboot of Walker, Texas Ranger. The show has been officially bumped to midseason as a result of schedule shifting the network had to make in light of recent COVID-19 shutdowns. Padalecki will play Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two. After being undercover for two years, Cordell returns home to Austin in an attempt to reconnect with his children while dodging dust-ups with his conservative family.

USA Network has opted not to proceed with new seasons of two of its high-profile drama series, The Purge and Treadstone. The Purge series revolved around a 12-hour period when all crime, including murder, is legal in an altered America ruled by a totalitarian political party. It was developed as a companion to The Purge film franchise (which is still ongoing and a new installment coming up). Treadstone, based on the Bourne film franchise, explored 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.

Freeform has passed on Close Up, the suspense drama pilot executive produced by How to Get Away With Murder creator Peter Nowalk and partner Mary Rohlich. Written by Keith Staskiewicz, the series was set in Centreville, NJ, a suburban town just like any other … at least on the surface. Centreville high school student Rachel Guyer is on a mission to expose the truth about her seemingly normal hometown and turn her community inside out.

Actor Brian Cox has revealed he will be the new face of Scottish detective Rebus in a new online adaptation. Cox is working closely with author Ian Rankin on the virtual play, which will be performed as part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s "Scenes for Survival" series. It comes more than a decade after Rankin first called on Cox to play the role back in 2008. Scenes for Survival will launch new pieces of work from creative talents online over the next few months, with all proceeds going to a hardship fund set up for artists and those working in the theatre industry who have been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis.

Bill Skarsgård, the actor who played Pennywise in the 2017 film, has been set to play Swedish criminal Clark Olofsson in a six-part Netflix series. Skarsgård will star in Clark, a Swedish language adaptation of Olofsson’s autobiography in which the convicted drug trafficker and bank robber reflected on his criminal escapades which began in the 1960s. Olofsson's exploits gave rise to the term "Stockholm syndrome," referring to hostages who forge an affinity with their captor.

The fifth season of the Italian crime hit, Gomorrah, is due to shoot at the end of the summer, although that could be the last we see of the mob drama, according to the show’s producer, Cattleya. Marco D’Amore, who plays iconic character Ciro Di Marzio in the drama, will return to direct the first five episodes with series regular Claudio Cupellini helming the other episodes.

CBS All Access has ordered a fifth season of The Good Fight. With the renewal, the series will be able to continue the story of season 4, cut short because of the coronavirus pandemic. Due to the ongoing halt in the production since early March, season 4, intended to be a 10-episode season, will conclude with episode 7 on Thursday, May 28. The season four cast includes Christine Baranski, Cush Jumbo, Sarah Steele, Nyambi Nyambi, Michael Boatman, Zach Grenier, John Larroquette, Audra McDonald and Delroy Lindo. Hugh Dancy also joined season four in a recurring role.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

This week on Writer Types, co-host Jennifer Hillier joined Eric Beetner for talks with legendary author Sara Paretsky and thriller writer Reece Hirsch; plus there were staff picks from Left Bank Books and Mysterious Galaxy.

In the latest episode of the Why I Write video series, CBC Books talked to Linwood Barclay about his latest thriller, Elevator Pitch, and his approach to writing crime fiction.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze podcast is up, featuring the mystery short story "Busted at the Book Sale" by Margaret S. Hamilton, read by actor Donna Beavers.

Beyond the Cover featured author Joel Rosenberg. The Jerusalem Assassin is his latest political thriller and the third book in his Marcus Ryker series.

Wrong Place, Write Crime chatted with Kate Anslinger about her Grace McKenna novels.

The My Favorite Detective Series podcast welcomed Joseph Wambaugh, an author known for his fictional and non-fictional accounts of police work in the United States.


Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, answered questions about detectives using their cellphones to take evidentiary photographs, whether real-life criminals leave red herrings, and where witnesses wait before testifying.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club was joined by authors Amy Engle (The Familair Dark) and Shauna Holyoak (Kazu Jones and the Denver Dog Nappers).

The Tartan Noir Show spoke with Helen FitzGerald, recently nominated for the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the year (for the second time); and also heard from David Wilson, Scottish Professor of Criminology, in conversation with author Lin Anderson at last year’s Bloody Scotland International Crime Festival in Stirling.

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Benedict Cumberbatch’s spy drama, Ironbark, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, has been given a theatrical release date and a new title. Lionsgate will release the Cold War espionage film as The Courier in theaters on August 28, 2020. The Dominic Cooke-directed thriller is based on the true story of Greville Wynne (Cumberbatch), an unassuming British businessman who is recruited into one of the greatest international conflicts in history. At the behest of the UK’s MI-6 and a CIA operative (Rachel Brosnahan), he forms a covert, dangerous partnership with Soviet officer Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) in an effort to provide crucial intelligence needed to prevent a nuclear confrontation and defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis.

David Ayer is set to write, direct, and produce with Chris Long (through their Cedar Park banner) an adaptation of the Harlan Coben bestseller, Six Years, for Netflix. The title refers to the number of years that passed since Jake Fisher watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. Brokenhearted, he throws himself into his career as a college professor while keeping a promise to leave her alone while he simmers in a slow building rage. His hopes rise when he reads that her husband died, and unable to help himself, he goes to the funeral. But he discovers the wife of the deceased man isn’t the woman he fell in love with and becomes determined to find her and get the truth.

Netflix’s film division also won a very competitive auction for the Simon Kinberg speculative script, Here Comes The Flood, Kinberg’s first original screenplay since Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Deadline reported there is currently no talent attached to the project, but it holds promise for the kind of roles that attract stars. The storyline is described as "an elevated, character-driven love-story heist movie, with the heist playing out in increments."

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Chris Pratt is heading to the small screen for Amazon Prime Video to star in the conspiracy thriller series, The Terminal List. Based on Jack Carr's bestselling novel of the same name, the story follows Pratt's character Reece, a Navy SEAL whose entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. Reece returns home to his family with conflicting memories of the event and questions about his culpability. However, as new evidence comes to light, Reece discovers dark forces working against him, endangering not only his life but the lives of those he loves.

Nicolas Cage is set to star in a scripted series centered on Joe Exotic, the subject of the Netflix docuseries, Tiger King. The eight-episode series is being produced by Imagine Television Studios and CBS Television Studios and is based on the Texas Monthly article, "Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild," by Leif Reigstad.

The recent Chris Hemsworth-starring movie, Extraction, is on track to become Netflix's biggest movie ever, which of course means there will be a sequel. Joe Russo has now closed a deal to write the sequel, although details of the plot are sketchy. (SPOILER ALERT: Although Hemsworth's character appeared to perish in the film, the ending nonetheless left open the possibility for a return, and there are also opportunities for prequels.)

CBS renewed eighteen series including the crime dramas All Rise; Blue Bloods; Bull; FBI; FBI: Most Wanted; MacGyver; Magnum P.I.; NCIS; NCIS: Los Angeles; NCIS: New Orleans; Seal Team; and S.W.A.T. The network also canceled four shows including Edie Falco’s Tommy, about a former high-ranking NYPD officer who becomes the first female police chief of Los Angeles.

Despite the coronavirus shutting down production on the majority of pilot season, CBS ordered three new series for next season, including its Silence of the Lambs sequel from Alex Kurtzman and also Queen Latifah’s reboot of The Equalizer. The "Lambs" sequel, titled Clarice, will follow Clarice Starling six months after the events of the movie, with Rebecca Breeds taking over the role famously played by Jodie Foster in the 1991 film. Kal Penn, Nick Sandow, and Michael Cudlitz were also recently added to the cast. The Equalizer will see Queen Latifah step into the lead role (played by Edward Woodward in CBS’ 1980s version and Denzel Washington in a pair of movies) of a retired intelligence agent with a mysterious past who exacts justice on behalf of innocent people trapped in dangerous circumstances.

In more news on The Equalizer front, the Law & Order and Sex and the City alum, Chris Noth, is set to co-star opposite Queen Latifah in the reboot. Noth will play William Bishop, a quirky ex-CIA director who was Robyn’s first handler and has a father-daughter relationship with her.

Eric Lange (Escape at Dannemora) is set to co-star opposite Courtney B. Vance and Tosin Cole in AMC’s courtroom drama series, 61st Street, from BAFTA-winner Peter Moffat (Criminal Justice, The Night Of) and executive producer Michael B. Jordan. 61st Street follows a promising, black high school athlete who is swept up into the infamously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system. Taken by the police as a supposed gang member, he 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. Lange will play Lieutenant Tardelli, a supervisor at the police department.

The Blacklist is finding an unusual way to finish off its season after production stopped due Covid-19 shutdowns: it's using a live-action/animation hybrid episode for the finale, scheduled to air Friday, May 15. Cast members recorded dialogue from their homes for the animated scenes as editors and animators worked remotely. The thriller centers on one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, Raymond "Red" Reddington (James Spader), who offers to help the authorities if a specific rookie agent, Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone), partners with him. The cast also includes Diego Klattenhoff, Amir Arison, Hisham Tawfiq and Harry Lennix.

A&E ordered 160 more episodes of Live PD, hosted by Dan Abrams with analysis from Tom Morris Jr. and Sgt. Sean "Sticks" Larkin. Live PD showcases the policing of America, following diverse police departments from across the country in real time as they patrol their communities. Using dash cams along with fixed rig and handheld cameras, the series captures the work of urban and rural police forces on a typical Friday and Saturday night.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone welcomed Fiona Cummins to talk about her favorite crisps, favorite chocolate, being a journalist, the difficult decisions to make post-lockdown, and what question she'd ask in a government briefing.

Special guest co-host, Erica Ruth Neubauer, joined Writer Types's Eric Beetner for a chat with authors Marcia Clark (Final Judgement), Jason Pinter (Hide Away), and Andrew Mayne (The Girl Beneath The Sea).

Read or Dead hosts, Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham, discussed the Edgar Award winners, Tana French’s new book, and celebrated the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie's first novel.

Mariah Fredericks stopped by Speaking of Mysteries to talk about Death of an American Beauty, the third installment in the series about hardworking lady’s maid, Jane Prescott, that takes place in New York City during the second decade of the 20th Century

On the latest Criminal Mischief podcast, Dr. D.P. Lyle tackled the topic of "Identifying Skeletal Remains."

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Brenda Chapman to discuss her novels and educate host Frank Zafiro about some Canadian history.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club interviewed Ann Cleeves about The Long Call, the first book in the Two Rivers Series.

The Tartan Noir Show spoke with writer Denzil Meyrick, the creator of the DCI Jim Daley series and also heard from the American superstar of crime writing, David Baldacci, talking about his novel, One Good Deed, and his long writing career.

Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Daisy Ridley is in talks to star in the psychological thriller, The Ice Beneath Her, that STX Entertainment acquired in a bidding war and will finance. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett and Chad Villella — the filmmaker trio collective known as Radio Silence behind the 2019 thriller, Ready or Not — will direct and produce. The Ice Beneath Her is based on a 2015 novel by Swedish author Camilla Grebe and follows a criminal profiler brought in to help solve a murder case that bares a resemblance to a previously unsolved murder from 10 years earlier.

Signature Entertainment has acquired global rights, excluding North America, to the crime-thriller, Blood And Money, starring Oscar-nominee Tom Berenger (Platoon). The story centers on a retired veteran who discovers a dead body and a bag full of cash while he's hunting in the snowy outback of Northern Maine. Violence quickly escalates when a group of hardened criminals in search of the loot turn the hunter into the hunted in an already stark and deadly wilderness.

Director-screenwriter-producer James Wan is prepping a film adaptation of Frank M. Robinson’s time travel story, Hunting Season, with Transformers producer Don Murphy and John Wick franchise writer Derek Kolstad on board to script. The story follows a law officer who is sent back to the past where he must acclimate in order to survive after he's deemed an enemy of the state and faces execution.

Manhunt co-creator Andrew Sodroski has been hired to adapt the screenplay (based on a pitch from Past Midnight writer T.J. Fixman) for the action-thriller, Rogue, which Dean Israelite (Power Rangers) is set to direct. The film project revolves around a deep-cover CIA operative who is on the longest night of her life.

Quiver Distribution and Redbox Entertainment have picked up North American distribution rights to Becky, a thriller starring Lulu Wilson, Kevin James, and Joel McHale. Originally set to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival from April 15-26 (before its cancellation due to the pandemic), it will now get a digital and on-demand release on June 5. Directed by Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott, the plot centers on spunky and rebellious Becky (Wilson) who is brought to a weekend getaway at a lake house by her father Jeff (McHale) in an effort to try to reconnect. The trip immediately takes a turn for the worse when a group of convicts on the run, led by the merciless Dominick (James), suddenly invade the lake house.

Film premiere dates keep slipping due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the latest changes are John Wick 4, which will no longer open on May 21, 2021 but rather on May 27, 2022, Memorial Day weekend; and the Deon Taylor-directed Hilary Swank thriller, Fatale, which will stay in 2020 but switch from June 19 to Oct. 30. Wick 4 will continue the adventures of Keanu Reeves's hitman saga, while Fatale centers on a married man who finds himself living a nightmare as he is relentlessly compromised, out-witted, and morally manipulated by a mysterious woman with whom he had a wild one-night stand.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

In a big shocker, The Lincoln Lawyer is not moving ahead at CBS. The high-profile legal drama from The Practice creator David E. Kelley, based on Michael Connelly’s series of bestselling novels, had sold to the network a year ago and was in final stages of pre-production with the cast assembled and two scripts written. Once CBS settles the penalty for cancellation, the producers will likely shop the series elsewhere. The Lincoln Lawyer centers on Mickey Haller, an iconoclastic idealist, who runs his law practice out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car, as he takes on cases big and small across the expansive city of Los Angeles.

STX is developing Fast and Loose with 87North, the production label of Hobbs & Shaw director David Leitch and EP Kelly McCormick. The project follows a man who wakes up in Tijuana after being left for dead with absolutely no memory. As he follows a string of clues to uncover his identity, he discovers that he’s been living two different lives: one, as a super-successful Crime Kingpin, surrounded by beautiful women, expensive toys, and a lavish lifestyle, and the other as an undercover CIA agent, but with a puny salary, no family or home life whatsoever and zero trappings of success. The problem is, he can’t remember which of these two personas is his true identity.

Netflix and SF Studios have set the cast for the streamer’s first Swedish feature, the action-thriller Red Dot, which will star Nanna Blondell, Anastasios Soulis, Tomas Bergström, Kalled Mustonen, Johannes Bah Kuhnke, Thomas Hanzon, and Anna Azcárate. Set in the Swedish mountains, the film follows David (Soulis) and Nadja (Blondell), a couple in their late twenties, who’ve been struggling with their marriage and try to rekindle their romance in the north of Sweden with a ski hike. But a quarrel with two local hunters turns into a nightmare as the couple is forced to flee into the unforgiving wilderness pursued by reckless shooters.

There will not be a second season of the USA drama series Dare Me after the network opted to cancel the series. Producer UCP is said to be shopping the series to other outlets. Based on the novel by Megan Abbott, who serves as writer and executive producer along with Gina Fattore, Dare Me is described as an unflinching exploration of teen angst, jealousy, loyalty, and the dynamics of power in a small Midwestern town.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

A new episode of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast included the first chapter of "They Tell Me You Are Cunning" by David Hagerty, read by actor Thomas Nance.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine podcast featured the story “Collector’s Find” by V. S. Kemanis, a former lawyer with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office who often writes fiction with legal themes.

On the latest edition of Writer Types, special guest co-hosts E.A. Aymar and Sarah Chen spoke with authors Sheena Kamal (Never Go Back) and Matthew Quirk (Hour of the Assassin).

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Andrew Mayne to chat about The Girl Beneath the Sea, his new novel featuring Sloan McPherson, an evidence-recovery diver for Lauderdale Shores PD.

Beyond The Cover spoke with #1 Bestselling Author Charlaine Harris.

Meet the Thriller Author featured Jason Pinter, bestselling author of Hide Away, the first Rachel Marin novel, as well as five novels in his Henry Parker thriller series and the standalone novel The Castle.

Chris Rhatigan stopped by The Wrong Place, Write Crime podcast to discuss the fine art of editing crime fiction.

Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, tackled questions about police officers carrying their own firearms on-duty and how a victim might get special protection.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club welcomed two Agatha Award nominees, Gabriel Valjan and Connie Berry.

The latest guest on The Tartan Noir show was James Oswald (of the Inspector McLean series and The Ballad of Sir Benfro series), talking about splitting his time between writing and farming; the show also spoke with Peter Robinson, Mari Hannah, and MW Craven about their detectives and story locations.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone celebrated their one hundredth episode with guest author Val McDermid, discussing how to reach readers in different ways, being in the Fun Lovin' Crime Writers, hearing voices, and more.