MOVIES
Daniel Radcliffe has landed the starring role in Beast of Burden. The film focuses on Sean Haggerty (Radcliffe), a character who’s used to lying and keeping secrets from everyone, including the feds, the cartel, and even his wife, Julie. But now he’s ready to get out of this illegal business — after he finishes carrying 55 pounds of cocaine across the border in a small aircraft.
Billy Flynn, Chris Mulkey, and D.B. Sweeney have boarded D.O.A. Blood River, the thriller written and helmed by Stephen C. Sepher. Inspired by Rudolph Mate’s 1950 noir thriller, the film follows pharmaceutical salesman Sam Collins as he travels from Los Angeles to a small town in Louisiana to sign the business deal of his career with Dr. Alexander, a doctor specializing in Vaccine Research. However, the outcome is not at all what he expected
Josh Gad has joined the all-star cast of Fox's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh. The story centers on a murder onboard the famous train and introduces Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh), who must solve the case while being surrounded by duplicitous passengers. Gad will play Hector McQueen, a skittish man who drinks too much and works as an assistant/translator to Depp's character.
Ronnie Gene Blevins has been cast in Death Wish, the remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson film. Bruce Willis will take on the starring role about a father seeking justice after his family is torn apart by a violent act. Vincent D’Onofrio, Elisabeth Shue, Dean Norris, Mike Epps, Kimberly Elise and Camilla Morrone are set to co-star.
TELEVISION
Lee Child is on a roll with his broadcast projects. Just as Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is heading to theaters, NBC has given a script commitment to Last Hope, a drama from Child, former CSI executive producer Andrew Dettmann, EuropaCorp Television, and Universal TV. With a script penned by Dettmann, the project centers on Hope Wesson, a highly trained but disenfranchised former military police investigator leading a team of fallen heroes who get justice for people with nowhere else to turn.
CBS is developing Stingray, a thriller drama from James Patterson, David Marshall Grant (Code Black) and Timberman-Beverly Productions (Elementary), based on Patterson’s upcoming book (which he co-wrote with Duane Swierczynski). Patterson also sold a cop drama based on his best-selling book series NYPD Red (co-written by Marshall Karp) to ABC with writer Michael Horowitz (Burn Notice). Stingray is described as a fun, adrenaline-fueled drama in the tradition of Mission: Impossible and Ocean’s Eleven that centers on a group of ex-con artists who work for the FBI, while NYPD Red centers on the eponymous special division of NYPD tasked with investigating Manhattan’s highest profile crimes.
NBC has put in development the hacker drama Sneakers from former The Mentalist executive producer Tom Szentgyorgyi, that's based on the 1992 movie starring Robert Redford. The storyline centers on computer hacker Martin, who heads a group of specialists that test the security of various San Francisco companies. Martin is approached by two National Security Agency officers who ask him to steal a newly invented decoder, but Martin and his team soon discover the black box can crack any encryption code, posing a huge threat if it lands in the wrong hands.
CBS has canceled dramas BrainDead and American Gothic after one season each. The Washington, D.C.-set political horror satire BrainDead marked the first post-The Good Wife series for showrunners Robert and Michelle King and starred Elizabeth Winstead, Danny Pino, Tony Shalhoub and Aaron Tveit. American Gothic starred Juliet Rylance and Justin Chatwin in a family drama with a serialized whodunnit twist. The cancellations came the same day CBS handed out full-season orders to three of its new fall shows including crime dramas Bull, starring Michael Weatherly, and MacGyver, starring Lucas Till.
How to Get Away with Murder star Viola Davis is attached to produce thriller drama Head Games for ABC. The series, which is being adapted by Chuck Rose based on his book of the same name, follows Park Avenue psychiatrist Dr. Jonah Hoffman, who is approached by the government to come work for them as a spy, feeding them crucial intel on one of his patients, a potential national security threat. As Jonah enters a duplicitous world filled with danger and paranoia, he begins to realize the only way to save the world is trust himself and take action.
Shades of Blue star Jennifer Lopez is reteaming with NBC for a new series, C.R.I.S.P.R., with a script order. The series is a procedural with a futuristic twist and has Bates Motel’s Anthony Cipriano attached to the script. The title stands for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats" and is set five minutes into the future, focusing on the crime of DNA hacking.
Tony Scott's 1998 film Enemy of the State is getting a sequel series penned by Morgan Davis Foehl for Jerry Bruckheimer and ABC Studios. The drama is set two decades after the film that starred Will Smith and Gene Hackman and follows an idealistic female attorney who must partner with a hawkish FBI agent to stop a global conspiracy that threatens to expose dark secrets and personal mysteries.
Fox has put in development a legal drama from producer Neal Baer and writer Robert Specland. The untitled project is set in the San Francisco Bay Area and centers on two attorneys from opposite upbringings facing off on opposite sides of the courtroom, and a young woman between them — an ex-con who joins the law firm in the hopes of putting her troubled past behind her. It explores the many shades of grey in the legal system and keeps you guess
ing, down to the last minute of each episode, letting the viewer be the judge before the verdict is revealed.
In yet another legal drama pickup, CBS has given a script commitment plus penalty to Incognito, an action-driven legal procedural from writer Rashad Raisani and producers Will Packer and Adam Rifkin. Written by Raisani, Incognito is based on the Swedish series Inkognito and follows a crusading U.S. Attorney who leads a skilled team of misfits into life and death situations to find critical evidence the prosecution needs to even the playing field with the corrupt and the mighty.
The third season of American Crime Story will examine the shocking July 1997 assassination of legendary designer Gianni Versace on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion by sociopath and serial killer Andrew Cunanan, who eight days later killed himself in a house boat as the Miami Dade police force moved in to capture him. The episodes will be based on the book Vulgar Favors by Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth, with Tom Rob Smith (London Spy) set to write the first two and multiple subsequent episodes.
SundanceTV has ordered the four-part true crime documentary series Murder in the Heartland: In Cold Blood Revisited (working title), a reexamination of the crime chronicled in Truman Capote's landmark book and Oscar-nominated film. The series is set to premiere next year, which marks its 50th anniversary of the book.
Veteran showrunner Neal Baer and writer Cathryn Humphris are developing an untitled legal drama at Fox that follows an FBI task force consisting of a cop, lawyer, psychologist, and social media expert as they travel across the country to investigate and solve hate crimes.
Freeform canceled the crime drama Guilt after just one season. Starring Billy Zane, Daisy Head, Emily Tremaine, Kevin Ryan, Cristian Solimeno and Naomi Ryan, the whodunit series was inspired by real-life murder cases such as those involving Amanda Knox, JonBenet Ramsay and Casey Anthony.
Danish crime author Anna Grue’s Nordic noir Dan Sommerdahl book series is being developed for Denmark’s TV2 with The Bridge (Bron/Broen) co-creator Nikolaj Scherfig attached as head writer. Set in a picturesque coastal town, each episode will revolve around a murder case solved by the titular Dan Sommerdahl and his best friend, Detective Superintendent Fleming Torp.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
This week, The Reading Life on WWNO (New Orleans Public Radio) chatted with Tana French, who continues to chronicle the adventures of the Dublin Murder Squad in her new book, The Trespasser, and also James Lee Burke, creator of Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux, who writes about his native Houston in The Jealous Kind.
The latest Suspense Radio podcast featured a trio of bestselling authors: Jon Land, Tasha Alexander and Daniella Bernett.
Mark Billingham, author and host of A Stab in the Dark podcast, interviewed David Morrissey, star of BBC's The Missing, State of Play, Sky1's Thorne and The Governor from The Walking Dead. Paul Hirons also spoke with Lee Child about the forthcoming Jack Reacher novel and film.
THEATER
The Baltimore Choral Arts Society will present the Baltimore premiere of "Dark Bells," an Edgar Allan Poe-based work for the unusual combination of solo viola, chorus, and orchestra by Baltimore-based composer Jonathan Leshnoff. The viola soloist will be longtime Baltimore Symphony Orchestra member Peter Minkler, who commissioned the work, which is based on three of Poe's poems: "The Bells," "Eldorado," and "Alone." Click here for more information and tickets about the event, scheduled for October 30.
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