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

Media entrepreneur and producer David Haring has picked up the rights to NYT bestselling author Kat Martin’s Texas Trilogy book series, with plans on developing the first book, Beyond Reason. Released in 2017, Beyond Reason centers on Carly Drake, a woman who has recently moved home to take over her grandfather’s trucking company but is soon stalked by danger.

Yellow Veil Pictures has acquired world sales rights for Blood On Her Name, a Southern gothic thriller directed by newcomer Matt Pope and starring Bethany Anne Lind (Ozark), Will Patton (Remember The Titans), and Elisabeth Röhm (Joy). The neo-noir feature centers on a single mother and her panicked decision to cover up an accidental killing, a choice that spirals out of control after her conscience compels her to return the dead man’s corpse to his family.

Sam Claflin, perhaps best known for playing Finnick Odair in The Hunger Games films, is the latest to sign on to Legendary’s Enola Holmes movie, based on The Enola Holmes Mysteries books series by Nancy Springer. He'll be joining star and producer Millie Bobby Brown, as well as Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Fiona Shaw, and Adeel Akhtar.

Nigerian-British actress Susan Wokoma has also landed a role in the Harry Bradbeer-directed Enola Holmes adaptation, which follows the adventures of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes’ much younger sister, Enola, a highly capable detective in her own right.

The first trailer for Rian Johnson’s Knives Out was released, and it shows a wild take on whodunits that Johnson says is a tribute to Agatha Christie. The film stars Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Katherine Langford, Noah Segan, Edi Patterson, Riki Lindhome, Jaeden Martell, and Christopher Plummer.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Agatha Raisin producer Free@Last TV and Cold Courage writer Brendan Foley are developing a TV detective drama based on Freeman Wills Crofts’ classic Inspector French novels. Wills Crofts (1857-1957), a railway engineer turned author, was a peer of Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler and was thought to be highly regarded by these writers. Set in 1920s Ireland, Scotland and England, Inspector French is a dogged world-class detective banished from Scotland Yard to post-partition Northern Ireland where he battles to introduce modern policing techniques to a reluctant force.

There's to be another remake attempt at Lovejoy, the Ian McShane-starring British television comedy-drama mystery series based on the novels by John Grant (under the pen name Jonathan Gash), which ran from 1986-1994 on BBC1. Blue Sky Pictures acquired the rights to the original novels with plans to "update it for the 21st century for both the millions who followed the original and a whole new generation of viewers." The series centers on roguish antiques dealer Lovejoy, who has a reputation for recognizing exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antiques from fakes.

Paramount Television has put in development Lock Every Door, a thriller drama based on Riley Sager’s just-released novel. The description reads "No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich, famous, or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s oldest, most elite and secretive buildings in the Upper West Side. When a fellow apartment sitter goes missing, Jules begins to dig into the Bartholomew’s mysterious history, discovering sordid secrets hidden within its walls and that her fate may already be doomed like those that came before her."

The Kaley Cuoco-led adaptation of The Flight Attendant has been picked up by WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming service. Based on Chris Bohjalian’s New York Times bestseller of the same name (for which Big Bang Theory alum, Cuoco, bought the rights in October 2017), the thriller follows Cassandra Bowden, a flight attendant who wakes up hungover in a Dubai hotel room…with a dead body next to her. Instead of informing the police, she joins her fellow crew members on a flight to NYC, where she is met by FBI agents with a few questions about her recent layover. Unable to piece together what happened, Cassandra begins to suspect that she might be the killer.

Covert Affairs’ Kari Matchett and True Blood’s Stephen Moyer are set to star in the Canadian spy drama, Fortunate Son. The series, which is set in the social and political chaos of the late 1960s, the Vietnam War, and the anti-war protest movement, follows a woman who helps smuggle Vietnam War deserters and draft evaders across the Canadian border. What she doesn’t know is how these actions will unfold and who is watching her.

Amazon is finalizing a third season renewal of the thriller series, Absentia, starring and executive produced by Castle alumna Stana Katic. Created by Gaia Violo and Matt Cirulnick and based on a pilot script originally written by Violo, Absentia centers on FBI agent Emily Byrne (Katic), who had disappeared without a trace and was declared dead after hunting one of Boston’s most notorious serial killers.

The suspense drama series Ransom, which has aired on CBS in the U.S., Global in Canada and TF1 in France, will not be getting a fourth season. Ransom follows crisis and hostage negotiator Eric Beaumont (Luke Roberts) and his elite Crisis Resolution team who work to balance the demands of their personal lives with their careers as negotiators who handle high-pressure kidnappings and hostage situations.

Shortform video streaming platform Quibi won't launch until spring 2020, but the venture founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg has already lined up a long list of programming including: El Señor de Los Cielos, a three-hour series that will tell the origin story at of the drug lord at the center of Telemundo's top-rated telenovela; #FreeRayshawn, about a young, black Iraq War veteran who is set up by New Orleans police; the comic murder mystery, Mapleworth Murders; Wolves and Villagers, described as a "Fatal Attraction-esque story"; and an untitled Liam Hemsworth thriller.

ABC has set premiere dates for its fall TV series, including the premieres of the mystery-themed thriller drama Emergence, and Stumptown, about a sharp-witted army veteran who becomes a private investigator in Portland, Oregon. Returning crime drama shows also include How to Get Away with Murder and The Rookie.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club podcast welcomed Susan Elia MacNeal, the bestselling author of the Maggie Hope mystery series.

Writer Types hosts Eric Beetner and S.W. Lauden chatted with Owen Laukkanen, Stephanie Gayle, Greg Herren, and Carter Wilson.

Read or Dead, hosted by Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham, talked about a new seven-figure film deal, as well as Stranger Things and all things Nancy Drew.

Alison Gaylin was the featured guest at Speaking of Mysteries, discussing Never Look Back, her new mystery in which the decades-old murder spree being investigated by Quentin Garrison for Closure, his true-crime podcast, is personal.

The Writer's Detective Bureau podcast, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on the topics of "Mass Shooting Aftermath, Partners, [and]Inside a Detective Office."

THEATER

LA's Geffen Playhouse has extended the run of Mysterious Circumstances through July 22. Inspired by The New Yorker article "Mysterious Circumstances: The Strange Death of a Sherlock Holmes Fanatic" by David Grann, the play focuses on Richard Lancelyn Green, the world's foremost scholar on Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is found dead in his London apartment. With multiple suspects and competing motives, Green's death raises questions that may be answered only by Holmes himself.

St. Paul, Minnesota's Park Square Theatre is presenting Rule of Thumb, three one-act murder mysteries by Agatha Christie, beginning July 12 with a run through August 25. In The Wasp’s Nest, Hercule Poirot comes between a bitter triangle of lovers to prevent a sinister murder; in The Rats, adulterous lovers find themselves lured to a flat, only to be trapped like rats and framed for murder; and completing the triple bill is a tense thriller about a woman who is hospitalized after seemingly falling from her balcony in The Patient.

The Theater at Monmouth in Maine has two crime-themed productions: the musical mystery dramedy Murder for Two (running through August 16), in which one actor investigates the crime, the other plays all of the suspects, and both play piano; and a staging of Baskerville, A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, from July 11 through August 15.