Media Murder for Monday

It’s the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

The Operative is headed to U.S. movie screens after Vertical Entertainment acquired North American rights to the spy thriller, looking to a third-quarter 2019 release. Written and directed by Yuval Adler and based on Yiftach Reicher Atir's novel, The English Teacher, the plot centers on Rachel (Diane Kruger), a rogue spy from Israel’s Mossad, who vanishes without a trace. The only clue to her whereabouts is a cryptic phone call she places to her former handler, Thomas (Martin Freeman), who must retrace her steps to determine what threats her knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program may pose to their operation, while also working to protect her.

Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger has signed on to direct the feature film, Slay the Dreamer, and he will also direct and produce a feature documentary on the same subject, the murder mystery surrounding the death of Martin Luther King. The projects are based on the life of Rev. James Lawson, friend and adviser to King and a civil rights icon in his own right, who tried to reopen the investigation of King’s murder when he discovered that Grace Walden — the only eyewitness to the man who shot King — had been involuntarily held in a mental institution outside Memphis since the assassination eight years earlier. 

Details have been sketchy concerning Rian Johnson's secretive upcoming mystery drama, Knives Out, but the director finally gave up some hints when he brought the first footage to CinemaCon. The film centers on a detective (Daniel Craig) investigating a murder when he comes across an eccentric, combative family. The film's star Jamie Lee Curtis was also on hand at CinemaCon and revealed that Don Johnson plays her husband and Chris Evans plays her son in a family gathering that turns bloody very quickly.

Avatar star Sam Worthington has boarded Nicholas Jarecki's opioid thriller, Dreamland, along with Game of Thrones actress Indira Varma and Grammy-winning recording artist and actor Kid Cudi (a.k.a Scott Mescudi). The new additions join a solid cast that includes Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly, Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez, and Lily-Rose Depp. Currently filming in Montreal, the project follows three colliding stories: a drug trafficker (Hammer) who arranges a multi-cartel Fentanyl smuggling operation between Canada and the U.S.; an architect (Lilly) recovering from an OxyContin addiction who tracks down the truth behind her son’s involvement with narcotics; and a university professor (Oldman) who battles unexpected revelations about his employer, a drug company with deep government influence bringing a new “non-addictive” painkiller to market.  

The first trailer was released for Trial by Fire, director Ed Zwick’s controversial film that focuses on the true-life Texas story of the unlikely bond between death row inmate Cameron Todd Willingham (Jack O’Connell) and a mother of two from Houston, Elizabeth Gilbert (Laura Dern) who, though facing staggering odds, fights mightily for his freedom. Geoffrey Fletcher wrote the pic based on The New Yorker article “Trial by Fire” by David Grann and the letters of Willingham.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Showtime has given a series commitment and opened a writers room for the spy thriller, Intelligence, from Oscar-winning filmmaker Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) in his first foray into television. The project is based on real stories from around the world and will explore the secret inner workings of power and how espionage intersects with politics, finance, media, and Silicon Valley. The first season will dramatize the behind-the-scenes history leading up to the 2016 U.S. election, with each subsequent season looking at a major world event through the lens of covert operations.

Netflix has unveiled a Spanish adaptation of a Harlan Coben story, The Innocent. Retitled El Inocente, the eight-part series tells the story of Mateo who interceded in a fight and ended up becoming a murderer. Now he’s an ex-convict who's about to get the house of his dreams with his pregnant wife, Olivia, until a shocking and inexplicable call from Olivia’s cell phone again destroys Mateo’s life for the second time.

The ten-part series Cannes Confidential is being developed for TV by Midsomer Murders writer Chris Murray. Using the iconic Cannes location as a backdrop, the series is described as “a romantic procedural series that blends comedy, mystery and crime detection with a heart-warming love story.” The story centers on the relationship between an idealistic and ambitious female cop and a Canadian ex-conman who’s on the run from both the police and the mob. The pair are forced into an unlikely crime-fighting partnership, which sees them solve a murder case in each close-ended episode.

The myCinema digital content distribution system has announced its full slate of films a year after the service's launch, including director Arto Halonen’s Murderous Trance. The psychological thriller stars Josh Lucas and is based on a real-life case in 1950s Danish crime lore where a man commits a horrific murder while supposedly under hypnosis.  

Jack O’Connell is to star in the BBC’s adaptation of The North Water, playing the lead role of Patrick Sumner, a disgraced ex-army surgeon who signs up as a ship’s doctor. Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, Sumner finds himself on an ill-fated journey with murderous psychopath Henry Drax (Colin Farrell). Sumner is in search of redemption, and his story becomes a harsh struggle for survival in the Arctic wasteland.

The CW’s Nancy Drew pilot is giving a nod to the TV history of the iconic character by hiring Pamela Sue Martin, who played the brilliant teen sleuth in the first TV series adaptation of the Nancy Drew books from 1977-79 on ABC. Newcomer Kennedy McMann takes on the title role of the amateur detective, while Martin will play a small-town psychic who offers her talents to help Nancy investigate a murder—and ends up delivering an otherworldly clue that neither of them bargained for.

Melanie Field (Heathers) and Magda Apanowicz (Continuum) are set for recurring roles on the upcoming second season of Netflix’s You, which follows bookstore manager and creepy stalker Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley). In the freshman season, based on Caroline Kepnes’s bestselling novel, Goldberg becomes obsessed with his customer, Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail), using social media and the Internet to stalk her.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Punisher) is set for a major recurring role opposite Kyle Gallner in CBS All Access’s straight-to-series drama, Interrogation. Co-created by Swedish writer-producer Anders Weidemann and John Mankiewicz, the project is an original concept based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years, in which a young man (Gallner) was charged with and convicted of brutally murdering his mother. Moss-Bachrach plays a close friend of Kyle Gallner’s character—a heavy drug user with a violent streak. With secrets of his own, he finds himself entangled in the murder investigation. 

Apple TV’s Defending Jacob, based on William Landay’s bestselling novel, has rounded out its series regular cast as production gets underway in Boston. Cherry Jones (24), Pablo Schreiber (American Gods), Betty Gabriel (Get Out), and Sakina Jaffrey (House of Cards) have been cast opposite Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, and Jaeden Martell in the limited-run series about a father (Evans), dealing with the accusation that his son, Jacob (Martell), is a 14-year-old murderer.

Netflix has released the trailer for Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Joe Berlinger-directed pic about Ted Bundy that stars Zac Efron as the serial killer. The film, penned by Michael Werwie, takes on the Bundy story from the perspective of his girlfriend Liz Kendall (Lily Collins), who refused to believe the truth about him for years.

A trailer was also released for the Amazon series, Too Old to Die Young, starring Miles Teller as a police officer named Martin, as a grieving LAPD cop who just lost his partner. Nicolas Winding Refn, known for 2011’s Drive, writes and directs the series, with Ed Brubaker (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) also writing.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The PBS series, Between the Lines with host Barry Kibrick, welcomed Dennis Palumbo, a licensed psychotherapist, former screenwriter, and author of the bestselling crime series featuring Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist and trauma expert. The topic was a recent article Palumbo wrote for the Poisoned Pen blog titled “A Dark Mirror,” about how good crime fiction both reflects and reveals the society in which it is set—from Conan Doyle to Raymond Chandler to Gillian Flynn and more. 

Cynthia Erivo is to lead the voice cast and co-produce the upcoming podcast, Carrier, from the LA audio firm QCode (which recently launched with the hit Rami Malek podcast, Blackout). Erivo stars in the scripted thriller as a long-haul truck driver who discovers she’s transporting a trailer with disturbing, mysterious contents. Also in the cast are Lamorne Morris (New Girl), Martin Starr (Silicon Valley), Lance Reddick (The Wire), Elliott Gould (Ocean’s Eight), Robert Longstreet (The Haunting Of Hill House), Dale Dickey (Hell Or High Water), and Chris Ellis (The Oath).

Frank Zafiro's Wrong Place, Write Crime featured author S.A. Cosby discussing his new novel, My Darkest Prayer, which features a former Marine and sheriff's deputy who dives into the murky waters of small town corruption even as dark secrets of his own threaten to come to the surface.

The new episode of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is a short story titled “Evening Call,” written by Julia Buckley and read by actor Amelia Ryan.

The Writer's Routine podcast chatted with C.L. Taylor, who has just released her sixth thriller, Sleep, which is centered on a woman who takes a job on a remote Scottish island as a retreat from the world—a retreat which quickly turns into a deadly nightmare.

Rachel Howzell Hall was the featured guest on the latest Speaking of Mysteries podcast, talking about her new novel, They All Fall Down, which centers around seven sinners brought to a private island for a reckoning.