Media Murder for Monday

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

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Producer Ben Shields Catlin has teamed with screenwriters Evan Parter and Paul Hilborn to develop a feature adaptation of the memoir, I Escaped From Auschwitz, by Rudi Vrba. It details Vrba’s experience in a concentration camp as well as his harrowing escape and eventual return to his Slovakia home where he would write the first eyewitness accounts of the death camps.

Saban Films has acquired the Robin Pront-directed crime thriller, The Silencing, which was written by Micah Ranum and slated to debut at the now-canceled SXSW Festival. The Silencing follows a reformed hunter (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) living in isolation on a wildlife sanctuary who becomes involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse when he and the local sheriff (Annabelle Wallis) set out to track a vicious killer who may have kidnapped his daughter years ago.

Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro are encouraging people to donate to the All In Challenge to help those in need during the COVID-19 crisis. Those who donate will get a chance for a walk-on role in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming feature production, Killers of the Flower Moon, as well as meet the actors and the director and attend the world premiere. An adaptation of the nonfiction book by David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon tells the true crime story of multiple murders of members of the Osage Indian tribe in 1920s Oklahoma that occurred after they found oil on their lands.

Paris Jackson, the 22-year-old daughter of Michael Jackson, is set to star as Jesus Christ in a new crime film called Habit opposite Bella Thorne. The thriller stars Thorne as a street smart, party girl with a Jesus fetish who gets mixed up in a violent drug deal and finds a possible way out by masquerading as a nun. Jackson then appears several times throughout the film to Thorne’s character as Jesus. Janell Shirtcliff is directing the film, with a script written by Shirtcliff and Suki Kaiser.

The Handmaid Tale's Emmy-winning director, Reed Morano, is in talks to helm the Jennifer Lopez feature The Godmother. Lopez plays real-life notorious Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco a/k/a "The Godmother," who outsmarted and outhustled the men around her to rise from an impoverished childhood and become one of the world’s biggest drug lords.

A trailer was released for The Quarry, based on the novel by Damon Galgut. Michael Shannon stars as a small-town sheriff who grows suspicious of the town's new preacher, David Martin, who isn't what he appears to be.

A trailer also dropped for Made You Look, Barry Avrich’s documentary about the largest art fraud In American history where an unassuming couple flooded the art market with a collection of fake art sold for millions. The film opens the virtual Hot Docs at Home festival this week.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Filming is underway on a charitable, filmed-from-home pilot starring Brian Cox, Claes Bang, and Mariella Frostrup, among others. UK producer Maggie Monteith has enlisted an all-female, transatlantic team of writer-directors for the whodunnit, The Agoraphobics Detective Society, whose proceeds will go to UK and U.S. film and TV freelancers impacted by coronavirus. The pilot for the eight-episode show will see a distraught group of patients band together to find a renowned expert psychiatrist who disappears without explanation.

Amazon Studios has put in development The Star Chamber, a thriller drama inspired by the 1983 Michael Douglas film of the same name. The Star Chamber series gives the movie a gender twist and follows a revered female federal appellate court judge in San Francisco who leads a shadowy group of judges that decide to right the wrongs of the broken legal system.

J.J. Abrams has set his first three series at HBO Max, including the crime project Duster, to be co-written by Abrams and LaToya Morgan (The Walking Dead, Parenthood). The project is set in the 1970s Southwest and revolves around the life of a gutsy getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate who goes from awful to wildly, stupidly, dangerously awful.

Levantine Films has acquired small screen rights to Rodney Barnes’s and Jason Shawn Alexander’s best-selling graphic novel series Killadelphia: Sins of the Father. Done in crime horror noir style, the story follows a Baltimore street cop who returns to his home town of Philadelphia to bury his estranged father, a revered detective in his own right. In so doing, the son discovers his father’s journal, which details his last case about a series of mysterious murders possibly supernatural in nature—following the clues down a macabre rabbit hole filled with horror and mystery.

HBO dropped a trailer for its Perry Mason series and gave the series a premiere date of June 21. The trailer for the reboot of the classic courtroom drama sees Matthew Rhys taking on Raymond Burr's role from the long-running CBS drama in an origin story of the famed criminal defense attorney set amid the crosscurrents of 1931 Los Angeles during the Great Depression.

Fox Entertainment continues with its early renewals, picking up flagship drama series 9-1-1 for a fourth season and its breakout spinoff 9-1-1: Lone Star for a second.

Director Josh Trank released the first look at Tom Hardy as the legendary gangster Al Capone in his film Capone, showing Hardy as an old man suffering from dementia but still dangerous and full of mystery.

A trailer was released for James Cameron’s documentary, Akashinga: The Brave Ones, set to premiere on National Geographic in honor of Earth Day. It sheds light on the all-female vigilante group trained to face down poachers and save wildlife at a moment’s notice, revolutionizing the way animals are protected and communities are empowered.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Simpsons’s Yeardley Smith is co-hosting a new true crime podcast, Small Town Dicks, which features identical-twin detectives Dan and Dave some of their investigations.

WFME's Intersection podcast featured Don Winslow talking about his new book, Broken, a collection of novellas. He also discusses what he’s reading and watching during the stay at home order and the impact of the pandemic on his creativity.

The podcast Seize the Yay chatted with author Harlan Coben about his novels, Netflix, and normalcy in New Jersey.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro spoke with Paul D. Marks about his books White Heat, Broken Windows, and the forthcoming, The Blues Don't Care.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze podcast features the first chapter of "Staging is Murder" by Grace Topping, read by actor Ariel Linn.

Writer's Detective Bureau podcast host, veteran Police Detective Adam Richardson, tackled the topics of "Sex Registrants, Trust Issues, and Re-Interviewing a Witness."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured two more Agatha Nominee interviews: Mo Moulton, nominated for Best non-fiction The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women; and Frances Schoonmaker, nominated for Best Middle Grade/Young Adult Mystery for the third installment of her Last Crystal Trilogy.

Two Crime Writers and a Microphone featured a two hour retrospective of the "glorious acting history of bestselling authors Mark Billingham and Martyn Waites."

On the latest episode of Partners in Crime, hosts Bob Daws and Adam Croft discussed Quiz, Killing Eve, how coronavirus is changing fiction writing, lockdown with Lynda La Plante, what they’ve been reading, and the fallout of episode 100.

On the Tartan Noir Show, Douglas Skelton dropped by to chat with Theresa Talbot about his varied career, his second book in the Rebecca Connolly series, The Blood is Still, and his recommended book, The Devil Aspect, by Craig Russell.