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

Treehouse Pictures has acquired the 2010 John Grisham novel, The Confession, and will develop it as a film. The story follow Donte Drumm, a young black man whose own forced confession put him on death row for the rape and murder of a high school cheerleader, and whose execution is scheduled in four days' time. It’s a race against the clock to exonerate him after a man walks into a priest's office and confesses to the crime from ten years earlier.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are reuniting on-screen in The Last Duel, a project based on Eric Jager’s book, The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal and Trial by Combat in Medieval France, with Ridley Scott attached to direct. Damon and Affleck are also adapting the script with Oscar-nominated screenwriter, Nicole Holofcener (Can You Ever Forgive Me?). The story is set in the 1300s in Normandy and Paris and brings to life a colorful, turbulent age and three unforgettable characters caught in a fatal triangle of crime, scandal, and revenge.

The Other Side Of The Wind co-producer Dax Phelan is gearing up to direct his second feature, the suspense thriller, Kirkwood. The film follows former police detective Joe Dolan and his estranged teenage son, Max, who grow closer as they work together to cover up an accidental murder. When the family of the deceased hires a ruthless private investigator to re-examine the evidence in the case and the investigator begins to suspect the Dolans, Max’s sanity is pushed to the breaking point and Joe must go to extreme lenghts to keep their secret safe.

Jennifer Lawrence is set to star in an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mob Girl by Teresa Carpenter.  Lawrence will also produce the film, which is based on the life of the mob wife turned police informant Arlyne Brickman, who grows up among racketeers on the Lower East Side of New York City where she’s drawn to the glamorous and flashy lifestyle of New York mobsters. Soon after, she begins dating "wiseguys" and running errands for them, before getting in on the action herself — eventually becoming a police informant and a major witness in the government’s case against the Colombo crime family.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Jeffery Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s Quibi short-form streaming service has picked up Skinny Dip, a comedy series based on Carl Hiaasen’s 2004 satirical novel. The project had been set up as a drama pilot at the CW in the 2018 cycle but did not move forward there. The series is described as a darkly comedic odyssey of revenge where a jilted woman miraculously survives a night in the open ocean after her husband suddenly flings her overboard on their anniversary cruise. Plucked to safety serendipitously by a retired cop, the two team up to gaslight her husband.

Robert Harris’s upcoming book, The Second Sleep, is being turned into a TV show by the producers of Downton Abbey. The Second Sleep follows a young priest, Christopher Fairfax, who arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with artefacts – coins, fragments of glass, human bones – which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the Ancients lead to his death? Did he discover something kept secret for centuries? The novel is described as "a genre-bending thriller that explores the devastating potential of misused and oppressive doctrine, whilst challenging our notions of liberty and history."

Big Talk Productions is adapting a series of crime novels from Nigerian author Leye Adenle for the small-screen. The book series, which includes Easy Motion Tourist and When Trouble Sleeps, are gritty and vivid crime novels that center around sassy heroine Amaka and her dangerous fight against corruption and exploitation. It goes from the gated mansions of Victoria Island where rich politicians plot to subvert democracy to the crowded streets of Ojuelegba where violent gangs fight for control.

Amazon has revealed its latest project, an adaptation of Cristina Alger's best-selling novel, The Banker's Wife. Set in the world of global finance, the thriller follows two women as they chase down answers following a mysterious plane crash. After shining a light on offshore accounts obviously meant to be kept in the dark because they're offshore accounts, the two find themselves in the crosshairs of a larger conspiracy involving money laundering, politics, and a complicated web of terrorists and criminals.

ITV is producing a new detective franchise, Invisible, written by Robert Murphy (lead writer on Left Bank’s long-running detective series DCI Banks) and starring The Crown’s Jason Watkins and Cold Feet’s Tala Gouveia. Set in Bath, Watkins plays the shy, modest DS Dodds, who is paired with the wildly ambitious DCI McDonald, played by Gouveia. Thrown together, boss McDonald and loyal sidekick Dodds forge a rumbustious, entertaining and ultimately effective partnership.

Jeff Bridges is set to star The Old Man, a new drama that has been ordered to series at FX. Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Thomas Perry, the project centers on Dan Chase (Bridges), who absconded from the CIA decades ago and has been living off the grid since. When an assassin arrives and tries to take Chase out, the old operative learns that to ensure his future he now must reconcile his past. This will mark the first starring TV role of Bridges’ career, after being nominated for seven Academy Awards.

More cast additions to the upcoing Perry Mason series:  McMafia's Juliet Rylance is set as a series regular, and Andrew Howard (The Oath), Eric Lange (Narcos), Robert Patrick (True Blood) and Stephen Root (Barry) will recur opposite Matthew Rhys and John Lithgow. HBO’s limited series is based on the characters created by Erle Stanley Gardner, with the reimagined Perry Mason set in 1931 Los Angeles.

Lea DeLaria (Orange is the New Black) is set for a recurring role on Hulu’s upcoming femme fatale thriller series Reprisal, from The Handmaid’s Tale executive producer Warren Littlefield and A+E Studios. Created, written and executive produced by Josh Corbin (StartUp), Reprisal is a "hyper-noir" story that follows Katherine (Abigail Spencer), a relentless femme fatale who, after being left for dead, sets out to take revenge against her brother and his bombastic gang of gearheads. DeLaria will play Queenie, the crowned matriarch of The Banished Brawlers gang.

Jamie McShane (Bloodline) and Rudy Dobrev (NCIS: Los Angeles) are set for recurring roles on the upcoming third season of military drama series SEAL Team. Starring David Boreanaz, SEAL Team follows the professional and personal lives of the most elite unit of Navy SEALs as they train, plan and execute the most dangerous missions that our country can ask of them. McShane will play Captain Lindell, a hard charging leader who’s dedicated to bringing a new generation of operational adaptability to the Navy’s Tier One Command; Dobrev will portray Filip, a tough, capable field agent for Serbia’s SIA. 

HBO unveiled a new documentary series about the Atlanta child murders, and also set its documentary slate for the rest of 2019, including other crime-related programs.

The first trailer for Why Women Kill has dropped for the CBS All Access show that stars Ginnifer Goodwin (Once Upon a Time), Lucy Liu (Elementary), and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Killing Eve) as a trio of women living in three very different time periods, but who all suffer infidelity from their spouses and each have murder on their minds as a result

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Writers' Bone podcast featured Laura Lippman, a former Baltimore newspaper journalist turned crime fiction author, whose latest novel, Lady in the Lake, is set in 1960s Baltimore and based on a real unsolved case in which a woman was found dead in a fountain.

RNZ National's Nine To Noon podcast with Hist Kathryn Ryan welcomed James Ellroy, whose bestselling books like The Cold Six Thousand and the L.A. Quartet novels paint vivid portraits of the seedier side of Los Angeles and the underworld.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with James Swallow, a former journalist and award-winning writer including his Marc Dane novels featuring a former MI6 field officer turned private security operative.

The Writer's Detective Bureau podcast host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on the themes of "Writer's Detective Bureau Foreign Language Interviews, Long-term Undercover Investigations, and Witness Protection."

It Was a Dark & Stormy Book Club spoke with Bess Carnan, 2019 Winner of the William F. Deeck – Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers.

THEATER

The Dorset Theater in Dorset, Vermont, is presenting Mrs. Christie from August 1 through August 17. The production is based on Agatha Christie's myserious disappearance for eleven days in 1926. This is the world premiere of Heidi Armbruster’s classic new comedy showing Dame Agatha as she’s never been seen before.