February 3, 2020

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

AWARDS

The British Academy of Film and Television handed their BAFTA Awards last night, the British version of the Oscars. There were a few honors for crime dramas, including Joaquin Phoenix winning Best Actor for Joker and Brad Pitt winning Best Supporting Actor for Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. Composer Hildur Guđnadóttir also continued her string of accolades this year with a Best Original Score nod for Joker.

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Jodie Foster has come on board to direct an untitled drama about the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa. Bill Wheeler is writing the screenplay, based on the book, The Day They Stole the Mona Lisa, by Seymour Reit. The robbery, which took place at the Louvre in Paris, was perpetrated by Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia, who believed Leonardo da Vinci’s painting should have been displayed in Italy. Peruggia kept the painting for two years and was caught when he attempted to sell it to the director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Paramount Pictures has set Ron Howard to direct The Fixer, based on a Tyler Hisel script. It tells the true story of a disgraced FBI agent who's tapped by the CIA during the height of the Cold War to lead a ragtag team of CIA operatives and Chicago mobsters on an unlikely mission to try to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Lethal Weapon 5 has had trouble getting off the ground (the last installment coming 22 years ago). However, director Richard Donner and producer Dan Lin recently revealed that Lethal Weapon 5 is on track to eventually being made. Lin said, "We’re trying to make the last Lethal Weapon movie. And Dick Donner’s coming back. The original cast is coming back. And it’s just amazing. The story itself is very personal to him. Mel and Danny are ready to go, so it’s about the script."

An official trailer dropped for The Burnt Orange Heresy. Art critic James Figueras (Claes Bang) and his lover, fellow American Berenice Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki), travel to the estate of powerful art collector Cassidy (Mick Jagger), who asks James to steal a masterpiece from the studio of a famous artist (Donald Sutherland).

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

NBC has given a formal pilot order to Langdon, a drama based on Dan Brown’s best-selling thriller novel The Lost Symbol. Langdon is conceived as a prequel and follows the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who must solve a series of deadly puzzles to save his kidnapped mentor and thwart a chilling global conspiracy.

True Detective creator, Nic Pizzolatto, and one of the show's original stars, Matthew McConaughey, are reuniting for Redeemer, a drama series which landed a script-to-series commitment at FX. Created by Pizzolatto and inspired by Patrick Coleman’s debut novel The Churchgoer, Redeemer stars McConaughey as a minister-turned-dissolute security guard "whose search for a missing woman in Texas leads him through a corruption-steeped criminal conspiracy, as his past and present impact and entwine around a mystery of escalating violence and deceit."

Twelve years after The Practice and Boston Legal ended their runs on ABC, David E. Kelley is returning to the broadcast network with the drama The Big Sky. Based on The Highway, the first book in C.J. Box’s Cassie Dewell series of novels, the procedural thriller follows private detective Cassie Dewell, who partners with ex-cop Jenny Hoyt on a search for two sisters who have been kidnapped by a truck driver on a remote highway in Montana.

CBS has given a pilot green light to The Equalizer, a reimagining of the classic series with Queen Latifah starring and executive producing. This new take is based on the character played by Edward Woodward on the original series and by Denzel Washington in the movie franchise, a retired intelligence agent with a mysterious past who uses the skills from a former career to exact justice on behalf of innocent people who are trapped in dangerous circumstances.

Author Andy McDermott’s spy thriller, The Persona Protocol, has been optioned by Universal TV, while Headline has picked up another two books by the author. The Persona Protocol follows Adam Gray—an agent implanted with experimental technology that lets him temporarily take on the memories and personality of others—as he hunts down a global terrorist conspiracy. The two more thrillers acquired by Headline for a potential series are based on McDermott's novels featuring globe-trotting archaeologist Nina Wilde and ex-SAS soldier Eddie Chase.

The CW has given a pilot order to Kung Fu, a reimagining with a female lead of the 1970s David Carradine-starring TV series. In the reimagined version, a young Chinese-American woman drops out of college and goes on a life-changing journey to an isolated monastery in China. But when she returns to find her hometown overrun with crime and corruption, she uses her martial arts skills and Shaolin values to protect her community and bring criminals to justice…all while searching for the assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor and is now targeting her.

Epix’s noir drama series Perpetual Grace, LTD will wrap with a limited-run conclusion instead of a second season. While received very well by critics and fans, the series didn't find a wide enough audience. The show premiered in June 2019 and stars Jimmi Simpson as the young grifter, James, as he attempts to prey upon Pastor Byron Brown (Ben Kingsley), who turns out to be far more dangerous than James suspects—Byron and his wife Lillian (Jacki Weaver), known as Pa and Ma, have used religion to bilk hundreds of innocent people out of their life savings.

Margarita Levieva is set to star in the international spy thriller, In From the Cold, which has received an eight-episode series order by Netflix. During a European vacation with her daughter, an American single mother’s life is turned upside down when the CIA forces her to confront her long-buried past as a Russian spy who was also the product of a highly classified KGB experiment granting her special abilities.

Deadline reported that Paget Brewster (Criminal Minds) has been tapped for a recurring role in the second season of CBS’s summer action-adventure series Blood & Treasure. The show stars Matt Barr and Sofia Pernas in a globe-trotting action-adventure drama about a brilliant antiquities expert and a cunning art thief who team up to catch a ruthless terrorist who funds his attacks through stolen treasure. In the same Deadline report, Sarah Minnich (Better Call Saul) is set to recur opposite Rosario Dawson in USA Network’s new crime anthology series Briarpatch, which follows Allegra Dill (Dawson), a dogged investigator returning to her border-town Texas home after her sister is murdered.

A trailer was released for Quibi's upcoming series The Fugitive, a reboot of the Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones movie (and the 1960s TV series that inspired it). The project stars Boyd Holbrook and Kiefer Sutherland playing all-new characters engaged in a similar game of cat-and-mouse...with a 21st century twist.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham talked about the Edgar Award nominees and some genre-crossing SFF mysteries.

Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Chad Dunas to chat about his new mystery, The Blaze.

Bestselling author Joseph Finder joined Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover to discuss his latest book, House on Fire, featuring private investigator Nick Heller.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze podcast is up featuring the mystery short story "Bark Simpson and the Scent of Death" by Alan Orloff, read by actor Sean Hopper.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host, Frank Zafiro, welcomed Nick Feldman to talk about his Mina Davis series.

The Writer's Detective Bureau podcast, hosted by veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, took up the topics of isolation and quarantine orders by Public Health, how jurisdiction usually works for narcotics cases, and using Search and Rescue teams in searching for a missing child.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club chatted with Eugenia Lovett West about her latest novel, Firewall.

The latest podcast from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine features a story by one of crime fiction's most celebrated critics, Francis M. Nevins, a former law professor who has also authored a number of well-received novels and short stories. Nevins reads his story "Night of Silken Snow" (which first appeared in the November 1994 issue of EQMM) with Christine Gilsinan.