Media Murder for Monday

The start of a new week means it's time for another roundup of crime drama news:

MOVIES

The Mark Gordon Company acquired feature film rights to All-American Murder: The Rise and Fall of Aaron Hernandez, the Superstar Whose Life Ended on Murderer’s Row. The upcoming book, to be published next January by Little, Brown and Company, is penned by bestselling author James Patterson and Alex Abramovich, with Mike Harvkey, based on their investigative reporting. It will dissect the story of Hernandez, the former all-star tight end for the New England Patriots who was convicted of murder in 2015, later indicted but acquitted of a second murder, and who committed suicide in his prison cell last year.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is set to star as the female lead opposite Will Smith in Gemini Man from Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media. The Ang Lee-directed project (which has been in development for the past 20 years) follows an over-the-hill assassin who faces off against himself, a clone who is younger and in his prime.

Director Ben Rekhi has wrapped filming on the feature thriller Maria, based on a true story and starring Italian-Filipino actress Alessandra de Rossi in the title role. Set against the drug wars in the Philippines, the timely story finds Maria fending for her three children alone after her husband is murdered under mysterious circumstances. As she delves into Manila’s dark underworld of cops, criminals and drugs to find answers, she realizes she must explore her own darkness to keep her family safe.

Saban Films has acquired North American rights to Pasha Patriki’s action thriller Black Water which stars Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. Black Water tells the story of a deep cover operative who awakens to find himself imprisoned in a CIA black site on a submarine. With the help of a fellow prisoner and an amateur agent, Wheeler (Van Damme) must race against the clock to escape the vessel and expose who set him up.

Aloe Entertainment has released a trailer for their upcoming crime drama Beast of Burden. Blondie helmer Jesper Ganslandt directs from a script by Adam Hoelzel, with Daniel Radcliffe starring as Sean Haggerty, a drug mule who becomes involved in a dangerous mission with the drug cartel, a hitman, and the DEA in order to save his wife.

TELEVISION AND STREAMING SERVICES

ABC is developing the supernatural cop drama Then Again from Flightplan writer Peter Dowling. The story is set in a world where reincarnation is prominent and follows LAPD officer Steven "Coop" Cooper, who has been taking medication to suppress memories of his past lives for as long as he can remember. Everything changes when he must relive his past life in order to hunt down a mass murderer.

Ruth Wilson (Luther, The Affair) will star in Mrs. Wilson, a three-part drama inspired by the memoir of her grandmother. Set in 1940s and 1960s London and 1930s India, the series follows Alison Wilson, who is happily married to her mystery-writer husband. When he dies, a woman shows up at her door, claiming that she, too, is Mrs. Wilson and was married to her husband. In addition to learning about his multiple wives, Ruth Wilson’s grandmother learns her husband was also a spy.

Doctor Who and The Crown star Matt Smith is in talks to play Charles Manson in the indie movie The Family, which hails from the American Psycho team of director Mary Harron and screenwriter Guinevere Turner. Based on the nonfiction book The Long Prison Journey of Leslie van Houten: Life Beyond The Cult by Karlene Faith as well as Ed Sanders’ 1971 novel The Family, the film will follow grad student Faith as she works with three brainwashed young women who were part of the Manson family — Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Susan Atkins.

Vandit Bhatt (Ripped) is set for a recurring role on the third season of ABC’s Quantico, which follows young FBI recruits training at the Quantico base in Virginia. Bhatt will play Jagdeep “Deep” Patel, a member of the new elite black ops team.

Acorn TV announced a new season of the mystery series Agatha Raisin for premiere in 2018, with Ashley Jensen returning in the lead role. Based on MC Beaton’s best-selling novels, Agatha Raisin follows a London PR whiz turned amateur sleuth who becomes entangled in mischief, mayhem, and murder when she opts for early retirement in a small village in the Cotswolds. Series 2 begins production in April 2018 for a late 2018 premiere and will adapt three of MC Beaton’s novels, The Wizard of Evesham, The Curious Curate, and The Fairies of Fryham.

Godless star Scoot McNairy has been cast opposite Mahershala Ali, Carmen Ejogo, and Stephen Dorff in the third season of Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO crime anthology series True Detective. Season 3 will tell the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ali will play the lead role of Wayne Hays, a state police detective from northwest Arkansas, while McNairy will play Tom, a father who suffers a terrible loss that ties his fate to that of two state police detectives over 10 years.

Fox Networks Group has released the first trailer for Deep State, the new action/espionage drama starring frequent spy star Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Kingsman) as a former agent lured back into the game. Deep State currently has no U.S. broadcaster, but the show premieres April 5 in Europe.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

For the first episode of 2018, the Writer Types welcomed bestselling authors Alafair Burke, Nick Petrie, CJ Tudor, and Frank Bill to the podcast, as well as featuring a Debut Author Unpanel with Aimee Hix, Michael Pool, and Tess Makovesky.

In the latest Crime Cafe podcast, host Debbi Mack chatted with mystery author Curtis Bausse all the way from Provence.

Author Sujata Massey visited 2nd Sunday Crime with host Libby Hellmann to talk about Massey's Agatha and Macavity Award-winning historical Rei Shimura novels.