MOVIES
Amy Adams will play the lead in Fox 2000’s The Woman In The Window, an adaptation of A.J. Finn’s best-selling novel, with Joe Wright directing from a script by Tracy Letts. Adams is set to play Anna Fox, an agoraphobic child psychologist who lives alone in a New York suburb. Afraid to leave home, she fills her day watching film noir classics and spies on her neighbors like they do in the movies she loves. She thinks she witnesses a murder through her window but she can’t be quite sure because she also is an alcoholic and takes prescription narcotics.
Tucker Tooley Entertainment has picked up the crime drama film spec script Thug for Den of Thieves writer/director Christian Gudegast to helm. Thug follows an ex-journeyman boxer and aging enforcer for a San Pedro gangster who attempts to get back into the lives of his estranged children and clean up the messes of his past. To do so, he must come to terms with the ruined landscape of his twenty-year career in crime - if the criminal underworld will loosen their hold on him.
Alicia Coppola (Shameless) has been cast in Andrea Berloff’s New Line film, The Kitchen, also starring Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss. Domhnall Gleeson, Margo Martindale, Bill Camp and Brian d’Arcy James also co-star in the DC/Vertigo comic book based film about wives of Irish mobsters who team up to take over running the business after their husbands are arrested and sent to prison.
Guy Pearce, Claes Bang, Vicky Krieps and Roland Møller are set to star in Lyrebird, the true story about an art forger who victimized the Nazis, with Dan Friedkin marking his directorial debut. The story centers on Dutch folk hero Han van Meegeren swindled millions of dollars from the Nazis by selling them forgeries of Johannes Vermeer paintings and is considered the most successful art forger of all time.
Actor Jim Klock has joined Armie Hammer, Dakota Johnson, Zazie Beetz, Brad William Henke and Karl Glusman for Annapurna’s untitled thriller written and directed by Babak Anvari. Set for release March 29, 2019, the pic follows a New Orleans bartender (Hammer) who experiences a series of disturbing and inexplicable events, after picking up a cell phone left behind in his bar, that begin to unravel his life. The film is based on Nathan Ballingrud’s novel The Visible Filth.
Claes Bang has come aboard The Burnt Orange Heresy, the neo-noir thriller from Giuseppe Capotondi. The Danish actor joins Christopher Walken and Elizabeth Debicki in the picture, which is based on the Charles Willeford novel. Bang will play James Figueras, a charismatic and fiercely ambitious art critic who is offered a career-changing introduction to reclusive artist Jerome Debney (Walken). In return for the introduction, however, he must steal a masterpiece from the artist’s studio.
If you'd like to plan your movie-going in advance, the Baltimore Sun compiled a handy sneak preview listing of upcoming summer movies that include the crime thriller Bad Samaritan with David Tennant; a restored version of the 1943 French crime drama Le Corbeau, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot; the European crime drama Racer and the Jailbird, directed by Michaël R. Roskam; the thriller Terminal starring Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg, Mike Myers, and Max Irons; and many, many more.
A trailer was released for Steven Soderbergh's latest psychological thriller, Unsane, which has the distinction of being the first full length feature film to ever be shot on an iPhone 7 plus. The film stars The Crown’s Claire Foy as a woman who ends up committed in a psychiatric ward but is convinced she was being stalked and that the stalker is part of the staff.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Before John Krasinski's new series Jack Ryan even had a chance to premiere on Amazon Prime, the streaming service has already given the go-ahead for a second season of the action series. Jack Ryan is the first television adaptation of author Tom Clancy's popular protagonist and stars Krasinski in the title role as he's thrust into the eye of a startling mystery involving suspicious bank transfers and a potential terrorist attack. The series' second season renewal comes amid a banner month for Krasinski, whose horror film A Quiet Place has been a huge hit at the box office.
Epix has given a 10-episode straight-to-series order to crime drama Godfather of Harlem, with Forest Whitaker attached to star and executive produce. The series hails from Narcos creator Chris Brancato and Paul Eckstein, and ABC Signature Studios. The project tells the true story of infamous crime boss Bumpy Johnson (Whitaker), who in the early 1960s returned from ten years in prison to find the neighborhood he once ruled in shambles. With the streets controlled by the Italian mob, Bumpy must take on the Genovese crime family to regain control. During the brutal battle, he forms an alliance with radical preacher Malcolm X – catching Malcolm’s political rise in the crosshairs of social upheaval and a mob war that threatens to tear the city apart.
The top-rated Lethal Weapon series was on the fast-track for renewal on the Fox network, but a behind-the scenes issue involving one of the two leads, Clayne Crawford, is making a third season uncertain. Crawford has had a history of bad behavior on the show, and that he has been disciplined several times over complaints of emotional abuse and creating a hostile environment. The problem is threatening the future of the show, with a recasting — a rare and dramatic move when involving a lead of an established series — being explored.
Oxygen Media has picked up new seasons of reality series Cold Justice and Criminal Confessions from executive producer Dick Wolf. Cold Justice follows veteran prosecutor Kelly Siegler, who partners with seasoned detectives, to dig into murder cases that have lingered for years without justice. Together with local law enforcement from across the country, the Cold Justice team has successfully helped generate approximately 35 arrests and 18 convictions. As the title suggests, Criminal Confessions delves into the psychological showdown that transpires inside actual police interrogation rooms between investigators and suspects and the process of pursuing a confession to solve cases.
Starz has opted not to proceed with Family Crimes, its drama series project from Suicide Squad writer-director David Ayer and Jerry Bruckheimer Television. Family Crimes already had a writers room up and running and a casting director had been hired and working when Starz notified the producers of its decision not to move forward with the series, citing "creative reasons." Written by Ayer, Family Crimes centers on a young privileged Latina who must reinvent herself in order to save her family when the feds close in on their business with the Mexican mob. She quickly learns to navigate the criminal underworld and finds herself trapped in a web of complex rules, rivalries and deep politics.
The first trailer has been released for HBO's adaptation of Gillian Flynn's novel Sharp Objects. The film stars Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, Eliza Scanlen, Elizabeth Perkins and Matt Crave in the tale of a newspaper journalist who must return to her hometown to report on a series of brutal murders. The eight-episode series is written by Flynn and Marti Noxon and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (Big Little Lies).
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Tori Telfer, author of Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History, is launching the true crime podcast called Criminal Broads on May 1. Installments will focus on "wild women who’ve ended up on the wrong side of the law, whether for leading a cult, serially murdering their husbands, swindling billionaires, or faking ectoplasm."
Acclaimed author Chesya Burke joined Alex Dolan on Thrill Seekers. Burke has published nearly a hundred fiction pieces and articles within the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Her new historical mystery novel, The Strange Crimes of Little Africa, is garnering critical acclaim.
Episode 16 of Writer Types featured megastar Gillian Flynn; Michael Kardos and his new novel Bluff; John Shepherd with his new novel Bottom Feeders; a dispatch from the LA Times festival of books; Bob Hartley; and a trio of short fiction publishers on what makes a great story.
Read or Dead hosts Katie and Rincey talked about the shocking developments with the Golden State Killer case, how Amy Adams is starring in all the book adaptations and also discussed the Edgar Awards.
GAMES
Indie video game developer Eggnut has launched a Kickstarter project for Backbone, a pixel-art adventure that lets players solve crimes as Howard Lotor, a Raccoon private investigator and a member of a dystopian animal society based in "retrofuturistic" Vancouver.
