THE BIG SCREEN
Bradley Cooper is in talks to star in Guillermo del Toro's retelling of William Lindsay Gresham's noir novel, Nightmare Alley. Cooper would replace Leonardo di Caprio after the actor couldn't come to an agreement with the film's producers. The 1947 adaptation starred Tyrone Power as an ambitious young con-man who teams up with a female psychiatrist who is even more corrupt than he is. At first, they enjoy success fleecing people with their mentalist act, but then she turns the tables on him, out-manipulating the manipulator.
Entertainment One has set Jon Turteltaub to direct Insane, a film based on "Crazy" Eddie Antar, the late consumer electronics king who wound up serving six years in prison for perpetrating one of the greatest securities frauds in history.
Dominic Monaghan (Lost) and Clancy Brown (Brilliance; Emergence) are joining Mel Gibson and Charlie Hunnam in the upcoming action-thriller, Waldo, directed by Tim Kirby. Based on the novel by Howard Gould, the story centers around a disgraced LAPD detective (Hunnam), who’s spent the past three years living off the grid. He’s reluctantly pulled back into his old life by a former lover in order to solve the murder of an eccentric celebrity’s wife. There’s no information on who exactly Monaghan will be playing in the film, but Brown will play the role of plain clothes detective Big Jim Cuppy.
Emile Hirsch is joining Mel Gibson in Force of Nature. Hirsch will play a cop who must protect the remaining residents of a building in the midst of a hurricane evacuation while violent criminals attempt to pull off a mysterious heist within the structure. Gibson plays a stubborn retired detective who refuses to evacuate and fights back when the thieves show up at his doorstep.
Chad Michael Murray, Shea Buckner, Tyler Olson, Lydia Hull, and Jessica Abrams are set to co-star opposite Bruce Willis in the action thriller, The Long Night. Directed by Matt Eskandari, the film follows two ruthless criminals who break into a disgraced doctor’s home to be given medical attention after one of them is shot during a robbery gone wrong. Knowing that he lacks the expertise to patch up the injured trespasser, the doctor must protect his family at all costs.
Crime Fiction Lover posted a list of "The top five crime films at Cannes 2019." The list doesn't include Martin Scorsese’s Jimmy Hoffa assassination film, The Irishman, since Cannes refused to allow Netflix a place in the main competition.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
BBC One, Victoria outfit Mammoth Screen and Agatha Christie Limited are teaming up on The Pale Horse, a TV drama adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel first published in 1961. Sarah Phelps (The Witness For The Prosecution) has scripted the two-part drama which has Amazon Prime Video on board as U.S. co-production partner. In the novel, a mysterious list of names is found in the shoe of a dead woman, and one of those named, Mark Easterbrook, begins an investigation into how and why his name came to be there. He is drawn to The Pale Horse, the home of a trio of rumored witches in the small village of Much Deeping. Word has it that the witches can do away with wealthy relatives using dark arts, but as the bodies mount up, Easterbrook is certain there has to be a rational explanation.
BBC One is also adapting Emma Healey’s novel, Elizabeth Is Missing, as a TV movie. Oscar winner Glenda Jackson is set to star as an elderly woman descending into dementia who embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared. Her search for the truth goes back decades with shattering consequences.
Amazon Studios will release the political thriller, The Report, in movie theaters on Sept. 27 and then drop the film on Amazon Prime Video on Oct. 11. The film, which stars Adam Driver, Annette Bening, and Jon Hamm, takes place in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as CIA agents begin using extreme interrogation tactics on people they think were behind it. The film follows one man’s pursuit of justice and chronicles not only the CIA’s secret torture program but also the struggle to release the report that tested the nation’s separation of powers and the rule of law.
Netflix has begun production on the ten-part UK-Spanish crime drama, White Lines, which is written by Money Heist creator Álex Pina. Laura Haddock leads the cast in the English-language series in which the body of a legendary Manchester DJ is discovered twenty years after his mysterious disappearance from Ibiza. When his sister returns to the beautiful Spanish island to find out what happened, her investigation leads her through a world of dance clubs, lies and cover-ups. Also starring are Marta Milans, Juan Diego Botto, Nuno Lopes, Daniel Mays, Laurence Fox, and Angela Griffin.
Cinemax is adapting Trackers, a thriller drama series based on the novel by bestselling South African author Deon Meyer. James Gracie, Rolanda Marais, and Ed Stoppard are set to star. The project interweaves three storylines set in Cape Town that center around a violent conspiracy involving organized crime, smuggled diamonds, state security, black rhinos, the CIA, and an international terrorist plot.
Spectrum Originals has ordered a second season of L.A.'s Finest, the streaming service's first original series. The project stars Gabrielle Union, who reprises her character from Bad Boys II, Syd Burnett, as she leaves life in Miami behind and becomes an LAPD detective, partnered with Nancy McKenna (Jessica Alba).
Jude Law is set to star in The Third Day, a six-part limited series from HBO and Sky. Law plays Sam, who after being drawn to a mysterious Island off the British Coast, is thrown into the unusual world of its secretive inhabitants. Isolated from the mainland, the rituals of the island begin to overwhelm him, and he is confronted by a trauma from his past. As the line between reality and fantasy blurs, Sam finds himself immersed in an emotional quest which puts him at odds with the islanders and begins to threaten their way of life.
DGA-Award winning director Dennie Gordon has been tapped to direct the Season 2 finale of Warrior, Cinemax’s Tong Wars drama series from Justin Lin and Banshee co-creator Jonathan Tropper. Warrior is a gritty, action-packed crime drama set in 19th century San Francisco during the time of Chinatown’s most powerful organized crime families, or tongs.
Nicholas Pinnock (star of ABC’s forthcoming legal drama For Life), David Tennant (Doctor Who), and Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter) are to star in Netflix’s police interrogation drama, Criminal. The format bending series consists of 12 episodes of 45 minutes with three episodes each set across four countries – France, Spain, Germany and the UK. The drama takes place exclusively within the confines of a police interview suite, a stripped down, cat-and-mouse drama focusing on the intense mental conflict between the police officer and the suspect in question.
The Flash alum Matt Letscher is set to recur as newspaper titan William Randolph Hearst on TNT’s The Angel of Darkness, the network’s upcoming limited series sequel to The Alienist (based on Caleb Carr’s bestselling book). Brittany Batchelder, a guest star on The Alienist, has also been elevated to a recurring role for Season 2. The Alienist’s lead cast, including Evans, Daniel Brühl and Dakota Fanning, all return for the new storyline, which finds Fanning’s Sara Howard with her own private detective agency and enlisting the help of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) to hunt down an elusive killer.
Former Iron Fist star Tom Pelphrey and Jessica Frances Dukes are set as new series regulars on the upcoming third season of Netflix’s Ozark. Season 2, starring Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, continued to follow Marty Byrde (Bateman) and his family as they navigate the murky waters of life within a dangerous drug cartel. Joseph Sikora and Felix Solis will recur in regular roles, while Lisa Emery and Janet McTeer have been promoted to series regulars for Season 3.
Arliss Howard (Moneyball), Desmond Harrington (Dexter), Kelly Jenrette (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Ness Bautista (Sense8) are set as series regulars for season 2 of Spectrum Originals’s anthology series, Manhunt. They join previously announced Jack Huston, Cameron Britton, Carla Gugino, Judith Light, Gethin Anthony, and Jay O. Sanders. Season 2, Manhunt: Lone Wolf, will chronicle one of the largest and most complex manhunts on U.S. soil — the search for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics Bomber, Eric Rudolph (Huston) — and the media firestorm that consumed the life of Richard Jewell (Britton) in its wake.
Paul Wesley, who co-starred in the first season of Tell Me a Story, will be back to star in the second season of the CBS All Access anthology series, playing a new character in the drama. Tell Me a Story, based on a Spanish format, takes the world’s most beloved fairy tales and re-imagines them as a dark and twisted psychological thriller. Season 2 will feature the tales of three iconic princesses – Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. (Season 1 weaved together dark stories based on The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel.)
The mystery/thriller/sci-fi series, Orphan Black, has been resurrected from the dead with audiobook and ebook forms, thanks to a partnership with digital fiction startup Serial Box. Tatiana Maslany has signed on to voice the cloned sisterhood in Orphan Black: The Next Chapter, which is set eight years in the future from where the series left off.
CBS has announced the premiere dates for its 2019-2020 fall season, including returning crime drama favorites such as the NCIS franchises, Hawaii Five-0, Blue Bloods, and Magnum, P.I.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Crime Fiction in Oxford is a series of podcasts offering two overviews - of detective fiction in general and of Oxford crime fiction in particular - as well as offering the opportunity of hearing celebrated crime writer Colin Dexter.
The latest Writer Types, hosted by Eric Beetner and S.W. Lauden, is back with two of their favorite writers: Blake Crouch, who's just released his new novel, Recursion, and Brian Panowich, who recently published the follow-up to his novel, Bull Mountain. Plus they interviewed Steve Lauden about his new novelette, That'll Be The Day.
A new episode of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up with the first two chapters of A Baker Street Wedding by Michael Robertson, read by Kelly Ventura.
In the latest edition of Criminal Mischief: The Art & Science of Crime Fiction, host DP Lyle delved into the "Autopsy of a Thriller."
Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro chatted with Colin Conway, who discussed his new release, Charlie-316.
Writer's Detective Bureau host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on his latest topics of "Writer's Detective Bureau Female Suspects, Writing Research, and Police Cars."
Crime Writers On... featured an episode recorded before a live audience at PodX in Nashville, where the panel discussed the stylized, semi-serious Netflix documentary, The Legend of Cocaine Island, and the team played a few rounds of "Crime Writers Against Humanity."
THEATER
A production of Agatha Christie's classic, The Mousetrap, moves to Theatre Royal, Brighton, from Monday, July 1 through Saturday, July 6. The scene is set when a group of people gathered in a country house cut off by the snow discover, to their horror, that there's a murderer in their midst.
The Hayes Theater in Sydney is presenting the Australian premiere of The Razorhurst, with book and lyrics by Kate Mulley and music by Andy Peterson. From the 1920s until the 1930s, two vice queens, Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, ruled the Darlinghurst underworld. Their rivalry was infamous, leading to a litany of violent crimes enacted by their razor gangs as each struggled to gain dominance in a world of sly grog (a/k/a bootleg liquor), narcotics, and prostitution.
The Idaho Shakespeare Festival is producing the classic Agatha Christie tale, Witness for the Prosecution, at the Idaho Shakespeare Amphitheater in Boise though July 28. The story revolves around a woman who hatches a desperate plan to save her husband from jail when he's accused of murder.
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