Media Murder for Monday

Monday greetings to all! Welcome to the latest roundup of crime drama news:

MOVIES

Keira Knigthley is set to produce and star in an untitled spy drama written by Camilla Blackett (The Newsroom and New Girl). The film will be produced by K Period Media’s Kimberly Steward and Josh Godfrey, along with Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky from Bristol Automotive who co-produced The Imitation Game, which landed Knightley her second Oscar nomination.

Jay Roach has signed to direct 67 Shots, a film that recaptures the circumstances behind the fatal shootings at Kent State University in 1970 where guardsmen from the Ohio National Guard fired 67 shots into a crowd of students protesting the war in Vietnam, killing four students and injured nine others. Roach sparked to numerous parallels to the contemporary political landscape and specifically the collision between law and order and the fundamental right to protest.

Gal Gadot is in talks to co-star in Ruin, a Justin Kurzel-directed a gritty period revenge-thriller drama said to be "in the vein of Inglorious Basterds and Fury." The story follows a nameless ex-Nazi captain who navigates the ruins of post-WWII Germany, determined to atone for his crimes during the war, as he hunts down the surviving members of his former SS Death Squad. It's unclear what role Gadot would play in the movie or when it would shoot since the actress has the Wonder Woman sequel on her schedule for late 2018.

Ohad Knoller, Greg Hill, Torben Liebrecht, Mike Hernandez, Greta Scacchi, and Pêpê Rapazote have joined the cast of MGM’s thriller Operation Finale, which is currently filming in Argentina. Chris Weitz is directing the project that sees Oscar Isaac starring as legendary Mossad agent Peter Malkin and is based on a true story of the 1960 covert mission where Malkin infiltrates Argentina and captures Adolf Eichmann (Oscar winner Ben Kingsley), the Nazi officer who masterminded the transportation logistics that brought millions of innocent Jews to their deaths in concentration camps. 

Will Smith and Tom Holland will voice the lead characters in the animated film Spies in Disguise, based on Lucas Martell’s original short Pigeon: Impossible and set in the high-octane, globe-trotting world of international espionage. Smith will voice the super-killed spy Lance Sterling, and Holland is Walter, a scientific genius who invents the gadgets Lance uses on his missions. When events take an unexpected turn, Walter and Lance suddenly have to rely on each other in a whole new way. And if this odd couple can’t learn to work as a team, the whole world is in peril.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS has bought a drama based on Edgar-winning Meg Gardiner’s novel UNSUB. The book follows a female detective on the trail of an infamous serial killer – inspired by the still-unsolved Zodiac case – who breaks his silence and begins killing again. The detective, who grew up watching her father destroy himself and his family as he chased the killer, now finds herself confronting the same monster her father never caught. 

Most of the team behind CBS/CBS TV Studios’ 2015 series Limitless have reunited for another crime drama with a sci-fi twist titled Recall. Written by Craig Sweeny, who also penned the Limitless pilot, the plot follows the NSA as it assembles a group of investigators to make use of the agency’s newest tool: a machine that allows the user direct access to the memories of witnesses, victims, and suspects – but the detectives must resist the temptation to use the device on themselves.

CBS has put in development the FBI crime drama Unthinkable from Jerry Bruckheimer The project is based on Chuck Wendig’s 2016 novel Invasive about a brilliant futurist, trained to see danger around every corner, who’s recruited by an uncharacteristically optimistic FBI Agent to identify the threats only she can see coming – and stop them before it’s too late.

A bomb squad drama written by Carol Mendelsohn and starring Morris Chestnut has landed at Fox with a big put pilot commitment. The project, The Long Walk, is based on the upcoming novel The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry that deals with a killer with a deadly vendetta who sets a trap and blows up half of the LA Bomb Squad. Private security expert and retired bomb tech Dick Stahl (Chestnut) reluctantly returns to the team he left behind and must confront his past head-on as he trains, recruits and rebuilds the best bomb squad in the country – all while working to catch the killer, and responding to the diverse calls of an elite Bomb Squad. 

One day ahead of its Season 1 finale, Mr. Mercedes was renewed for a 10-episode second run next year on AT&T Audience Network. David E. Kelley again will write the script and Jack Bender direct the Stephen King adaptation starring Harry Treadaway and Brendan Gleeson. The series follows Brady Hartsfield (Treadaway), a demented killer who taunts a retired police detective Bill Hodges (Gleeson) with a series of lurid letters and emails, forcing the ex-cop to undertake a private, and potentially felonious, crusade to bring the killer to justice before he is able to strike again.

The internationally-produced hostage negotiator drama Ransom has been picked up for a second season on CBS, a surprising reversal since the series was canceled in May. The show stars Luke Roberts as expert hostage negotiator Eric Beaumont, whose team is brought in to save lives when no one else can, and is inspired by French crisis negotiator Laurent Combalbert. The 13-episode second season will be filmed in Hungary and will air in 2018.

David Boreanez and his new TV team are going to be suiting up for a few more episodes after CBS announced it's giving a full season order to SEAL Team, the military drama starring Boreanaz as Jason Hayes, the head of a Tier 1 operator military unit. The series follows Jason and the brave men and women he fights with into the deadliest missions on the planet and then tracks how they deal with maintaining their regular lives once they're back home.

There is good and bad news regarding Canadian TV crime dramas:  The CBC TV's espionage drama The Romeo Section, which follows Professor Wolfgang McGee (Andrew Airlie) as he secretly manages a number of Canadian spies involved in obtaining information about gangs and the drug trade, was cancelled after only two seasons; however, another crime drama, Blood and Water, starring Steph Song as detective Jo Bradley, was renewed for a third season.

TNT is rounding out the cast for its new six-episode drama series One Day She’ll Darken, hiring India Eisley and Jefferson Mays (Law & Order: SVU) to star opposite Chris Pine. The project tells the story of Fauna Hodel (Eisley), given away at birth, who investigates the secrets to her past and follows a sinister trail that swirls ever closer to an infamous Hollywood gynecologist, Dr. George Hodel (Mays), a man involved in the darkest Hollywood debauchery. Pine will play Jay Singletary, a former Marine-turned-hack reporter/paparazzo who was disgraced over his story about Hodel years ago, but now sees a glimmer of redemption.

Derek Morgan is returning to the BAU. Shemar Moore is set for a guest spot on CBS’ Criminal Minds to reprise his role as Morgan, appearing in the fifth episode which airs Wednesday, October 25. Moore was an original Criminal Minds cast member from 2005-2016 until his character survived a harrowing kidnapping and left the BAU to focus on life and family.

Paddy Considine, Bel Powley and Nabhaan Rizwan have been set to star in Neal Street Productions’ Informer for BBC One. The six-part contemporary thriller will air on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S., after the UK broadcast and centers on Raza (Rizwan), a young, second generation Pakistani man from East London who is coerced by Gabe (Considine), a Counter-Terrorism officer, to go undercover. Gabe, who has a past he is unwilling to expose, is joined by Holly (Powley), his ambitious and endlessly curious partner. As the investigation heats up, the stakes for all three get higher and higher. 

Fox released a trailer for the upcoming 11th season of the supernatural FBI procedural The X-Files, and show creator Chris Carter chatted with Deadline about the original series and bringing it back. However, fans shouldn't expect star Gillian Anderson to return for a potential 12th season, if there is one, since she recently announced the current 10-episode series would be the end of her participation in the project.

A new trailer was released for Mindhunter, the new Netfix project from David Fincher and Charlize Theron that's based on the book of the same name by famed FBI agent John Douglas and stars Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany as FBI agents on the trail of serial killers.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed TV/movie director and Anthony-nominated author John Shepphird to the show to discuss his crime fiction.

The It's a Mystery Podcast chatted with Edgar nominated mystery author Victoria Thompson, who has written twenty books in her Gaslight Mystery series set at the end of the 19th century in New York City.

Beyond the Cover spoke with special guest Linwood Barclay about his new, standalone blockbuster thriller, Parting Shot, which spins off from the events of the explosive Promise Falls trilogy.

Debbi Mack interviewed mystery author Daniella Bernett on the Crime Cafe podcast; Bernett has just released the third novel in her Emmeline Kirby/Gregory Longdon mystery series.

Book Riot's Read or Dead podcast discussed the upcoming Tana French BBC adaptation, which they used as an opportunity to "fawn over her books."