Welcome to a new week and a new roundup of crime drama news:
THE BIG SCREEN
Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to Cold Case Hammarskjöld, the documentary from journalist Mads Brügger that delves into the investigation surrounding the unsolved death of UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld. The film won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival where it had its world premiere.
Paramount Pictures is developing Kyle Starks’ graphic novel Kill Them All and has set the action project up with Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse producers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec. The story, first published in 2015, centers on a betrayed murderess seeking revenge who partners with a hard-drinking former cop who wants his job back. They have to fight their way through fifteen floors of criminals, assassins, drug lords, murderers, and accountants in a Miami high-rise.
Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired U.S. rights to Collin Schiffli’s thriller All Creatures Here Below, which stars Guardians of the Galaxy’s Karen Gillan, Bird Box’s David Dastmalchian, and Once Upon a Time’s Jennifer Morrison. The film is having its international premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival later this month and is slated for a spring release. The film centers on Gensan (Dastmalchian) and Ruby (Gillan) who struggle to thrive in the face of abject poverty. When Gensan loses his job and gambles his last pay check, he sets in motion a series of events with dire consequences.
Oscar winners Mira Sorvino and Richard Dreyfuss are set to star in Reckoning, the Dark Castle Entertainment crime thriller written and directed by Adam Lipsius. The indie centers on Ben Myers (Dreyfuss), a temperamental, take-no-prisoners tough guy with a terrifying dark side who, despite suffering from leukemia while nursing his dementia-ridden wife, decides to seek revenge on the thieves who have destroyed his life. Sorvino will play Police Detective Nick Wallace, Ben’s semi-estranged daughter who rebukes his attempts to buy her affections.
Rising Asian actor Mike Angelo has joined veteran action director Renny Harlin’s heist pic The Misfits. Pierce Brosnan stars along with Hermione Corfield and Jamie Chung in a tale centered on renowned criminal Richard Pace (Brosnan) who finds himself caught up in an elaborate gold heist that promises to have far reaching implications on his life and the lives of countless others
Sebastian Stan will replace Chris Evans in The Devil All The Time, the Antonio Campos-directed drama, after Evans dropped out over a problem with scheduling. The Devil All The Time is an adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s 2011 mid-western gothic novel set in the forgotten backwoods of a place called Knockemstiff, Ohio, where a storm of faith, violence and redemption brews.
Rebecca Ferguson, who joined the Mission: Impossible franchise as the enigmatic agent Ilsa Faust in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation in 2015, has confirmed she will return for the next installment. Director Christopher McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise are both expected to be on board for two more Mission: Impossible movies, shooting back-to-back for release in 2021 and 2022.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have partnered with Hulu to adapt Erik Larson’s book The Devil in the White City, which tells the true story of two men, an architect and a serial killer, whose fates were forever linked by The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. It follows Daniel H. Burnham, a brilliant and fastidious architect racing to make his mark on the world and Henry H. Holmes, a handsome and cunning doctor who fashioned his own pharmaceutical “Murder Castle” on fair grounds – a palace built to seduce, torture and mutilate young women.
New details about the Breaking Bad movie indicate the feature-length film will be a sequel revolving around Aaron Paul, who will reprise his Emmy-winning role as Jesse Pinkman. Sources also confirm Netflix will have first-run rights to the top-secret project, which will then air on AMC. The movie will be written by original series creator Vince Gilligan and follows the escape of a kidnapped man (Paul’s Jesse) and his quest for freedom. Speaking on The Dan Patrick Show, Bryan Cranston (who starred as Walter White) said it was unclear if Walter White would appear in the sequel but said he would “absolutely” appear in the movie if Gilligan were to ask him.
Acorn TV has signed up two spin-offs of Australian period drama, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. The Modern Murder Mysteries series moves the setting to the 1960s and follows Phryne Fisher's niece (Geraldine Hakewill), who sets out to become a world-class private detective in her own right with the guidance of The Adventuresses’ Club, a group of exceptional women of which her celebrated aunt was a member. The feature film, Miss Fisher and The Crypt of Tears, continues the story of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, which aired for three seasons between 2012 and 2015, and starred Essie Davis, who will return along with series regulars Nathan Page as Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, Miriam Margolyes as Aunt Prudence, and Ashleigh Cummings as her loyal assistant and maid Dorothy ‘Dot’ Collins.
NBCUniversal International Networks has acquired the gritty crime drama The Murders across multiple European markets as well as for Africa. The eight-part series follows a determined but fallible rookie homicide detective (Jessica Lucas) in Vancouver. After a fatal error on the job which costs the life of a fellow officer, she is driven to rectify her mistake and measure up to her late father, a highly decorated detective killed in the line of duty, searching for redemption in her investigations.
USA Network has given the green light to Psych: The Movie 2, a follow-up to its successful Psych: The Movie, starring original cast members James Roday, Dulé Hill, Maggie Lawson, Kirsten Nelson, Corbin Bernsen, and Tim Omundson. The movie picks up with Santa Barbara Police Chief Carlton Lassiter (Omundson) ambushed on the job and left for dead. In a vintage Psych-style Hitchcockian nod, he begins to see impossible happenings around his recovery clinic. Shawn (Roday) and Gus (Hill) return to Lassie’s side in Santa Barbara and are forced to navigate the personal, the professional, and possibly the supernatural.
UK broadcaster Alibi, which is operated by Discovery and BBC-backed UKTV, is creating its first original scripted program, a crime drama described as “Happy Valley-meets-Silent Witness.” Traces is a six-part series based on an original idea from crime writer Val McDermid, whose Hill/Jordan books were turned into the hit crime drama Wire in the Blood. It’s set in Scotland and explores the world of SIFA, the Scottish Institute of Forensic Science, with a focus on Emma Hedges, Prof. Sarah Gordon, and Prof. Kathy Torrance – who will use the rigors of forensics to uncover the truth about an unsolved murder case.
Avengers: Endgame directors, Joe and Anthony Russo, are creating a “groundbreaking, action-packed, character-driven spy series” for Amazon Studios. The show will be built around an international series that will then be followed by multiple connected local-language series starting with India and Italy. You can read even more about it via this Q&A over at The Wrap.
Amazon has confirmed the cast for The Hunt, a vengeance-driven Nazi hunting series, executive produced by Oscar-winning Get Out writer-director Jordan Peele. Al Pacino, Logan Lerman, and Jerrika Hinton have closed deals to star in the series, along with Lena Olin, Carol Kane, Saul Rubinek, Tiffany Boone, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Greg Austin, and Dylan Baker. The Hunt follows a diverse band of Nazi hunters living in 1977 New York City, known as The Hunters. After discovering hundreds of high-ranking Nazi officials are living among us and conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the U.S., the eclectic team of Hunters will set out on a bloody quest to bring the Nazis to justice and thwart their new genocidal plans.
Hulu has picked up the femme fatale thriller Reprisal, from Handmaid’s Tale exec producer Warren Littlefield and Josh Corbin (StartUp). The series centers on a relentless femme fatale who, after being left for dead, leads a vengeful campaign against a "bombastic gang of gearheads." The drama stars Abigail Spencer in the lead role alongside Rodrigo Santoro, Mena Massoud, Madison Davenport, Rhys Wakefield, David Dastmalchian, W. Earl Brown, and Gilbert Owuor.
Emmy winner Edie Falco is set to star in the CBS drama pilot, Tommy, from the Bull team of co-creator Paul Attanasio and Amblin TV. Falco will play the titular character, Abigail “Tommy” Thomas, a former high-ranking NYPD officer who’s just been hired as the first female Chief of Police for the LAPD.
Law & Order alum Alana de la Garza and Roxy Sternberg have been tapped to star opposite Julian McMahon and Keisha Castle-Hughes in FBI: Most Wanted, the planned spinoff of Dick Wolf’s freshman CBS drama series, FBI. De la Garza will play Assistant Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castile, and Sternberg will play FBI Agent Sheryll Barnes, an ex-NYPD detective with "elevated street smarts."
The CW has found its Nancy Drew. The network cast newcomer Kennedy McMann to play the title role in its pilot, based on the beloved YA novels. The series will follow Nancy whose college plans and sense of self have been derailed by a recent family tragedy – but when she ends up a suspect in a murder, it rekindles her love for detective work, even though the clues lead her to believe a long-dead local girl may be the killer. Charmed's Leah Lewis co-stars as George, a tough, tattooed girl from the wrong side of the tracks, who’s forced to team up with Nancy to track the culprit and clear their names.
Starz has opted not to renew Counterpart, the J.K. Simmons-starring sci-fi espionage thriller, for a third season. In the series, Simmons plays Howard Silk, a lowly cog in a Berlin-based bureaucratic UN spy agency who discovers his organization safeguards a crossing into a parallel dimension. He’s thrust into a shadow world in which the only man he can trust is his near-identical counterpart from this parallel world.
Ken Marino is the latest of the Veronica Mars cast to confirm his return for the Kristen Bell-led series’ upcoming eight-episode revival on Hulu. Marino will reprise his role as sleuth Vinnie Van Lowe.
Investigation Discovery has ordered a six-part series following a detective with a photographic memory titled Deadly Recall. It features Detective Pat Postiglione, who remembers every single detail of the crimes that he’s tasked to solve.
Will Packer is producing a documentary series for Investigation Discovery about the murder of 29 African American children in Atlanta. The three-part special will air on the cable network on March 23.
Amazon announced that the John Krasinski-fronted Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is coming back for a third season. The series is a small-screen reinvention with a modern sensibility of the iconic Tom Clancy hero, starring Krasinski as Jack Ryan, an up-and-coming CIA analyst thrust into a dangerous field assignment for the first time.
The first trailer was released for Season 2 of the BBC America drama, Killing Eve, which also will be simulcast on AMC this year. The series revolves around Eve (Sandra Oh), an MI6 operative, and psychopath assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer).
If you're trying to keep score about how your favorite shows stand in the renewal wars or what new favorites might be forthcoming, this updating list from The Wrap may help.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
CBS Sunday Morning profiled crime author Don Winslow about his writing career and latest novel, The Border.
The featured guest authors on this week’s Speaking of Mysteries were Charles Todd (the writing team of Charles and Caroline Todd), talking about The Black Ascot, the 21st installment in their series featuring WWI veteran, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge.
Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham chatted about adaptations coming of Karin Slaughter’a and Bill Clinton’s books, and the bizarre story about Dan Mallory, a.k.a. AJ Finn.
Best sellers Steph Post, Gregg Hurwitz, and debut author SA Cosby stopped by Writer Types.
The third episode of Michael Connelly’s new true crime podcast, Murder Book, focused on Pierre Romain, a member of the 1960s gang, Rollin’, who beat a murder charge and later became a cop, only to be arrested thirty years later for the murder.
The topics on this week’s Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, were “Therapist Confidentiality, Gladys R. Questionnaires, and Police vs. Medical Examiners.”
The Nightlife podcast welcomed author and Agatha Christie fan Stuart Turton, whose novel The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle aims to shake up the mystery genre.
The Writer’s Routine podcast featured Fiona Barton, journalist turned psychological thriller author, talking about her new book, The Suspect.
The latest guest on Meet the Thriller Author was William L. Myers, Jr. who chatted about his Philadelphia Legal Series.
