MOVIES
Warner Bros. is developing Impossible Odds, based on a memoir written by Jessica Buchanan and her husband Erik Landemalm and set to be adapted by Brian Helgeland and directed by Clint Eastwood (who previously worked with Helgeland on Mystic River). The story centers on Buchanan, an aid worker who was captured and held by Somalia land pirates until President Obama sent in Seal Team 6 to rescue her and a colleague.
Oscar-winning writers Joel and Ethan Coen are developing the techno-thriller Dark Web for Fox. Based on a two-part Wired article by Joshuah Bearman and adapted for the screen by author Dennis Lehane, the story follows Ross William Ulbricht, who developed "The Silk Road" illegal online marketplace for drugs and was eventually arrested in 2013.
Arrival screenwriter Eric Heisserer has been brought on board to put the finishing touches on the script for the Sylvester Stallone action thriller Godforsaken, based on an original treatment from Daniel Casey. The story centers on an aging ex-con (Stallone) who is forced out of his self-imposed isolation to protect the only family he has left and avenge the death of the son he hardly knew.
Netflix has the lead in an auction to acquire The Helicopter Heist, with Jake Gyllenhaal attached to star and produce with his Nine Stories Productions partner Riva Marker. The project is based on a manuscript for a yet-to-be-published book written by Swedish author Jonas Bonnier that follows the true story of the the infamous Västberga robbery of 2009 where a gang of brazen robbers used a stolen Bell 206 Jet Ranger to land on the roof of a building and abscond with more than $5 million.
The first trailer was released for Werner Herzog's Salt And Fire starring Michael Shannon and Gael García Bernal in the eco-thriller about a scientist and CEO who must come together as a volcano threatens to explode.
TELEVISION
John Grisham’s novel The Rainmaker is in the works at CBS with a put pilot commitment. The story follows a young lawyer right out of college whose life is turned upside-down as he takes on a fraudulent insurance company. It was previously adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola starring Matt Damon, Claire Danes, and Danny DeVito.
Showrunners and producers David E. Kelley and Jonathan Shapiro are reuniting for a new legal drama for streaming giant Amazon. Goliath, which launched its eight-episode first season this past week, follows Billy (Billy Bob Thornton) and Donald Cooperman (William Hurt) who play former law partners turned courtroom opponents.
Legal dramas are apparently the latest craze: NBC has put in development Reversible Error, an hourlong legal drama from The Boy Next Door scribe Barbara Curry and Fast & Furious franchise writer Chris Morgan. Written by Curry, Reversible Error follows a former high-powered attorney who is freed from prison after her conviction for murdering her husband is reversed. Now she must piece her shattered life back together and find her husband’s true killer before a vindictive D.A. finds a way to prosecute her again.
Masterpiece will feature a Prime Suspect prequel titled Prime Suspect: Tennison, serving as co-producer alongside ITV Studios and NoHo Film & Television. Created by Lynda La Plante, who wrote the early installments of the original series, the new six-part drama portrays the early career of iconic, tenacious detective Jane Tennison — the role that established Helen Mirren as a household name. Stefanie Martini now stars as the ambitious 22-year-old Jane, a probationary officer in 1970s London who’s starting out in an environment where chauvinism and rule-bending are the norm. No airdate has been announced yet for the show.
After taking on one hot-button issue with the drama Shots Fired which deals with police shootings, Fox is taking on another timely topic: college rape. The network has given a put pilot commitment to Controversy, an investigative thriller drama about a successful crisis-management consultant brought in to advise a university when a co-ed accuses football players of gang-raping her. Facing a crisis of conscience, she partners with a lawyer for the university to seek out the truth.
Scottish novelist Tony Wood’s London-based Buccaneer Media is teaming with Irvine Welsh on the adaptation of Woods' book Crime, with Dougray Scott attached to star in and exec produce the six-part drama. Crime is the sequel to Welsh’s 1998 novel Filth, which was made into a 2013 movie (starring James McAvoy) and is set in Miami with Scott taking on the role of Detective Inspector Ray Lennox who becomes embroiled in a case involving a ring of pedophiles.
Idris Elba is heading to Africa for his next TV series for Brazza, a Narcos-like drama set in the criminal underworld of Brazzaville, the capital of Republic of the Congo. Paul Viragh (Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll) is attached to write the series, in which a Congolese man living in Paris is forced to return home after his father dies under suspicious circumstances. Back home he gets drawn into a bloody family feud that threatens the country's uneasy truce.
CBS could be breaking new ground for Asian-American actors with Exhibit A, a legal drama from former Castle co-showrunner Alexi Hawley, Hawaii Five-0 co-star Daniel Dae Kim, and Jane The Virgin producer Ben Silverman. The project, written by Hawley, is based on the South Korean series My Lawyer, Mr. Jo, and centers on a disgraced Korean-American prosecutor who finds redemption as a defense lawyer when he pairs with a young idealistic attorney and the two fight for the underdogs of Los Angeles. The show would be a rare U.S. broadcast drama with an Asian lead and the first U.S. dr
ama series outside of the action genre where the main lead is Asian American.
Milo Ventimiglia, one of the stars of the new NBC/20th TV drama This Is Us, has teamed with Royal Pains co-creator Andrew Lenchewski for Kin, a 20th TV-produced drama project which has been set up at Fox with script commitment plus penalty. Written and co-executive produced by Kevin O’Hare, Kin is loosely based on Cundiff’s extended family growing up and will center on a tight-knit Florida law-enforcement family who become the primary suspects in the disappearance of a notorious drug cartel leader following a DEA plane crash.
Graham Norton's debut novel, Holding, is being produced for television by the former boss of EastEnders, Dominic Treadwell-Collins. He's partnering with Blueprint Television, which won the rights to the chat show host's book about a murder in a rural Irish community.
Netflix’s drama Mute has tapped The Leftovers star Justin Theroux to join previously announced cast members Paul Rudd and Alexander Skarsgard in the sci-fi thriller, to be directed by Duncan Jones, who also co-wrote the script with Mike Johnson. Set 40 years in the future, the film centers on a mute bartender (Skarsgard) in a world that has become a roiling city of immigrants, where East crashes against West. His character will be looking for a woman who has disappeared — and when his search takes him deep into the city’s underbelly, an odd pair of American surgeons seem to be the only recurring clue.
TNT has cancelled another one of its staple programs: Murder in the First, the drama starring Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson as two homicide detectives who have looked into a different big case each season.
But fans of Bosch on Amazon have happier news: Amazon renewed the series based on Michael Connelly's books for a fourth season.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Crime writer Peter James has launched his own "crime-hub" YouTube channel, Peter James TV, promising to feature exclusive interviews with household names in crime including RL Stine, Martina Cole and Paula Hawkins, as well as behind the scenes research footage for his bestselling Roy Grace series.
Lee Child explored the writing and legacy of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series for a Radio 4 program,"21 Shades of Noir: Lee Child on John D MacDonald."
THEATER
Broadway production company The Araca Group and global toy-and-games makers Hasbro Inc. are bringing Col. Mustard and the rest of the suspects from Clue to the stage. The show will mark their second live entertainment collaboration, after the Broadway-bound musical adaptation of Monopoly announced earlier this year. Clue will be adapted by writer/director Jonathan Lynn from his 1985 Paramount Pictures film and premiered at Pennsylvania’s Bucks County Playhouse next May, followed by a U.S. national tour and a potential U.K. tour.
A play by Rosemary’s Baby and Deathtrap author Ira Levin is being staged by the UK's Norwich based Baroque Theatre Company. Veronica’s Room tells the story of Susan Kerner, a young beautiful Boston college student who is on a date with the charming Larry Eastwood in 1973. The young lovers find themselves at The Brabissant mansion owned by the Mackeys, an elderly Irish couple instantly struck by Susan’s strong resemblance to long since dead Veronica Brabissant. Together they enter Veronica’s room, untouched since 1935, and nothing will ever be the same.
The Playhouse Theatre in Northampton is staging Mindgame through October 22. The play, written by Anthony Horowitz (Foyles War and Midsummer Murders) centers on true crime author Mark Styler who visits Fairfields Hospital to interview the notorious serial killer Easterman - but Dr. Farqhuar, head of the hospital, seems unhelpful and quixotic, and the place hostile and unnerving.
GAMES
Sony Pictures and Google have teamed up to launch the "Inferno Journey Through Hell" online game based on the Robert Landon thriller novel by Dan Brown. Finding clues hidden throughout Google products and the world’s most popular social platforms, players will complete up to three puzzles each week and will have the opportunity to win weekly prizes, culminating in one grand prize – an Italian getaway with stops in Rome, Milan, Florence, and Venice. As each new set of puzzles are unveiled week-to-week, the experience will become increasingly difficult to solve as the 'Inferno Journey Through Hell' progresses to its ultimate mind-bending final challenge.
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