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

Colin Farrell is teaming up with producer Lee Magiday (The Favourite) and Hopscotch Features on a screen adaptation of the Irish crime novel, The Ruin. Irish writer Dervla McTiernan’s thriller, set in Galway, follows detective Cormac Reilly as he is thrown back into a case from 20 years before involving two children whose mother died of an overdose. Through the eyes of the detective, we see into dark corners of Ireland including police corruption and abuses in the church.

Morgan Freeman and Frank Grillo will star in Daniel Adams’ action film, Panama, inspired by true events. Set in 1989, the film follows James Becker (Grillo), a rugged ex-marine who is sent undercover by his former commander (Freeman) to execute a high-value deal. He must navigate through the local civil war to fight assassins and court femme fatales.

Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 has added Frank Langella to the cast and is also in negotiations with Mark Rylance. Langella joins the cast as U.S. District Court Judge Julius Hoffman, and Rylance would play the defense lawyer for the Chicago 7, William Kuntsler. They join a previously announced cast that includes Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jonathan Majors and Alex Sharp. Based on Sorkin’s screenplay, the film is based on the infamous 1969 trial of seven defendants charged by the federal government with conspiracy and more after they were arrested during the countercultural protests in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton are in talks to star in the untitled body-swapping thriller that Chris Landon (Happy Death Day) is directing. The film follows a teenager (Newton) who, after swapping bodies with a deranged serial killer (Vaughn), discovers she has less than 24 hours before the change becomes permanent.

Simon Pegg and Oscar winner J.K. Simmons have been set to star in My Only Sunshine, a comedy heist thriller being directed by Mark Palansky. The film, written by J.T. Petty and K. Reed Petty, revolves around a passionately dysfunctional couple who orchestrate a bank robbery as an unconventional act of bloodthirsty marriage counseling. They try to make peace with the shocking mystery of their relationship throughout the violent hostage situation, discovered by a cop hostage negotiator who previously investigated a past related crime.

Anna Kendrick is set to star in Unsound, a new crime thriller film to be directed by Bharat Nalluri from a screenplay by Matthew Ross and Christopher Edwards. The Oscar-nominated Kendrick will play a New England state trooper, privately struggling with irreversible hearing loss, who’s tasked with investigating the prison break of a notorious gang leader. As she digs deeper into the most dangerous case of her career, she uncovers a vast conspiracy that, coupled with her deteriorating condition, threatens to end her career — and her life.

Shailene Woodley has signed to star alongside Robert De Niro and Shia LaBeouf in After Exile, the Joshua Michael Stern-directed drama. Anthony Thorne and Michael Tovo wrote the script, based on true events from Tovo's life. After Exile is the story of Mike Delaney (LaBeouf) who, after being released from prison for killing an innocent man after a violent robbery, must re-enter his old life where he and his ex-criminal father (De Niro) attempt to save his younger brother from a dead end future of drugs and crime. Woodley will play Dana, a woman who has a shared past with Delaney and is seeking her own redemption.

Martin Scorsese's mob drama, The Irishman, has been given its release date, hitting select theaters on November 1 before heading to Netflix on November 27. Based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, the film stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci. It was also revealed that the runtime will be 210 minutes (well over three hours).

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

ITV-backed producer Silverprint Pictures is to adapt the crime novel, The Long Call, from the creator of Vera and Shetland, for television. The book is the first novel in Ann Cleeves’ Two Rivers series featuring the reserved and complex Detective Inspector Matthew Venn and evoking the stark beauty of the North Devon coastline and a community where murder and intrigue bubble just beneath the surface.

Emily St John Mandel’s upcoming mystery thriller novel, The Glass Hotel, will be turned into a television series by NBCUniversal International Studios. Mandel will write the pilot, her first television screenplay, about the disappearance of a woman from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania. This mysterious, but seemingly isolated, incident opens a window into a massive ponzi scheme which implodes in New York, destroying countless fortunes and lives with it.

Sophie Rundle (Gentleman Jack) and Martin Compston (Line of Duty) are set to headline BBC One’s forthcoming five-part thriller, The Nest. They play a couple who've been trying to have a baby for years and meet Kaya (Mack), an 18-year-old who agrees to carry their baby. It feels like they were meant to meet, but was it really by chance? Who is Kaya and what has brought her to this couple?

Naomie Harris (Moonlight) will star opposite Jude Law in the HBO and Sky mystery drama, The Third Day, a story told over six episodes and in two distinct halves. The first, "Summer," sees Sam (Law), a man drawn to a mysterious island off the British coast where he encounters a group of islanders set on preserving their traditions at any cost. The second, "Winter," follows Helen (Harris), a strong-willed outsider who comes to the island seeking answers, but whose arrival precipitates a fractious battle to decide its fate.

Abby Brammell (9-1-1, The Unit) has booked a recurring role on the upcoming sixth season of Amazon’s Bosch, the series based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels. Bosch stars Titus Welliver as homicide Detective Harry Bosch, Jamie Hector as Jerry Edgar, Amy Aquino as Lt. Grace Billets, Madison Lintz as Maddie Bosch and Lance Reddick as Deputy Chief Irvin Irving. Brammell will play Heather Strout, a tough, smart, blue-collar woman who may or may not be mixed up in some of her husband’s issues.

ABC has posted the first nine minutes of supernatural drama, Emergence, online. Emergence follows Jo (Allison Tolman), a police chief who takes in a young child (Alexa Swinton) she discovers near the site of a mysterious accident who has no memory of what has happened. The investigation draws Jo into a conspiracy larger than she ever imagined, and the child’s identity is at the center of it all.

A trailer was released for Netflix's upcoming thriller, The Spy, which stars Sacha Baron Cohen in a dramatic role playing real-life Israeli spy Eli Cohen. Cohen was an Israeli clerk who was recruited as a Mossad agent and, in the early 1960s, tasked with infiltrating the Syrian regime.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

A new episode of the Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast features the mystery short story "Murderous Lies" by Peter DiChellis, read by actor Rene A. Ponce.

Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer Tony Knighton on the Crime Cafe podcast about his writing, including the novella, Happy Hour and Other Philadelphia Cruelties.

On the latest Read or Dead podcast, hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham talked about some interesting adaptations coming soon; survivalist thrillers; and their love (or lack thereof) for the outdoors.

Dr. DP Lyle's latest Criminal Mischief episode looked at "Storytelling In Dixie."

The Writer's Detective Bureau, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took on the topics of "Victim Visas, One-Way Mirrors, and HIDTA."

The featured guest on It Was a Dark & Stormy Book Club was Edwin Hill, discussing his latest novel, The Missing Ones, featuring missing-persons expert, Hester Thursby.