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.

Gerard McMurray, who directed Burning Sands for Netflix, is set to return to the studio to direct The Formula, starring John Boyega and Robert De Niro. The Formula follows a Formula One racing prodigy who is forced to become a getaway driver to save the only family he has left.

Alyssa Milano will star in Netflix's feature film adaptation of Nora Roberts's romance thriller, Brazen Virtue. Milano plays Grace, a prominent mystery writer and crime expert, who hurries back to her family home in Washington, D.C., after her estranged sister summons her. When her sister is killed and her double life as a webcam performer is revealed, Grace ignores the warnings of a cool-headed detective and gets involved in the case. Unfortunately, the casting choice of Milano caused a bit of controversy that Roberts felt compelled to defend publicly.

Taylor John Smith and Harris Dickinson are set to join Daisy Edgar-Jones in the film adaptation of the bestselling novel, Where The Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. Set up at Sony, the film is being directed by Olivia Newman from a screenplay written by Oscar-nominated scribe Lucy Alibar. The story takes place in the mid-20th century South and centers on Kya, a young woman who is abandoned by her family and has to raise herself all alone in the marshes outside of her small town. However, when her former boyfriend is found dead, Kya is thrust into the spotlight, instantly branded by the local townspeople and law enforcement as the prime suspect for his murder.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

The Critics Choice Association, the largest critics organization in the U.S. and Canada, representing more than 400 television, radio and online critics and entertainment reporters, announced the nominees for the 26th annual Critics Choice Awards for television (the film nominees will be revealed on February 8). Crime dramas nominated in the Best Drama Series category include Better Call Saul (AMC), The Good Fight (CBS All Access), Ozark (Netflix), and Perry Mason (HBO). Best Actor noms include Jason Bateman for Ozark; Bob Odenkirk for Better Call Saul; and Matthew Rhys for Perry Mason. Best Actress nominees include Christine Baranski for The Good Fight (CBS All Access) and Laura Linney for Ozark.

HBO has acquired the rights to adapt Alex Marzano-Lesnevich's book, The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, as a limited series. Jeremiah Zagar (Hustle) will co-write the script, exec produce, and direct. The drama revolves around a young lawyer whose opposition to the death penalty is shaken when she's assigned the case of a child murderer—whose complicated life story parallels the long-suppressed trauma of her past.

Dylan McDermott is heading to New York to star in Law & Order: Organized Crime. McDermott, best known for his role on ABC’s long-running drama, The Practice, will star alongside Christopher Meloni in the NBC drama. Meloni is reprising his role as Elliot Stabler, who returns to the NYPD to battle organized crime after a devastating personal loss. Stabler will aim to rebuild his life as part of a new elite task force that is taking apart the city’s most powerful criminal syndicates one by one.

French mystery thriller, Lupin, is returning to Netflix for its second half of season one this summer. The series has become a surprising hit for the streamer, with 70M households projected to watch since its launch on January 8, making it easily Netflix's biggest French original. The project is a contemporary adaptation of the novels penned by French writer Maurice LeBlanc and stars Omar Sy as Assane Diop, who uses the world famous gentleman thief and master of disguise, Arsène Lupin, as his inspiration as he tries to get revenge on those responsible for his father's death.

Jamie Dornan has been cast as the lead of The Tourist, a limited series from BBC One and HBO Max. Along with Dornan, the six-episode show will star Danielle Macdonald, Shalom Brune-Franklin, and Hugo Weaving. The Tourist centers on a British man (Dornan) who finds himself in the heart of the Australian outback being pursued by a vast tank truck trying to drive him off the road. An epic cat and mouse chase unfolds and the man later wakes in the hospital, hurt, but somehow alive. Except he has no idea who he is. With merciless figures from the man’s past pursuing him, his search for answers propels him through the vast and unforgiving outback.

The Canadian legal drama, Diggstown, is heading to the U.S. after Fox acquired the series. Diggstown follows Marcie Diggs (Vinessa Antoine Antoine), as a corporate lawyer who reconsiders her priorities and moves to work in a legal-aid office after her beloved aunt takes her own life following the pressures of a malicious prosecution. The team of lawyers that Marcie works with are a curious band of do-gooders, cynics, and scrappers – messy souls struggling to keep personal disappointment and demons out of their practice. The cast also includes Natasha Henstridge, C. David Johnson, Stacey Farber, Brandon Oakes, Shailene Garnett, Tim Rozon, and Dwain Murphy.

lan Cumming has been tapped for a recurring role opposite Michael Sheen and Tom Payne on Fox’s serial-killer thriller drama, Prodigal Son. The series follows Malcolm Bright (Payne), son of "The Surgeon" (Sheen), who as a child was responsible for enabling the police to arrest his father. Now a profiler, who formerly worked for the FBI until he was fired, he currently consults for the New York Police Department. Bright is forced to confront his father after a copycat serial killer uses his father's methods of killing, and then uses his father's insights to help the police solve particularly horrible crimes and battle his own inner demons.

Scandal actor, Dan Bucatinsky, is returning to ABC’s Thursday lineup, joining the cast of ABC’s new Katey Sagal-starring series, Rebel, which was slotted in the Thursday 10 PM slot starting April 8. Created by Krista Vernoff and inspired by the life of Erin Brockovich, Rebel centers on Annie "Rebel" Bello (Sagal), a blue-collar legal advocate without a law degree. She’s a funny, messy, brilliant and fearless woman who cares desperately about the causes she fights for and the people she loves. Bucatinsky will play Jason Erickson, an edgy, somewhat bitter university professor from whom Rebel (Sagal) seeks help.

Jen Landon (Yellowstone, Animal Kingdom) is set for a recurring role opposite Yaya Gosselin on the second season of CBS’s drama series FBI: Most Wanted. Landon will play Sarah Allen, Tali’s (Gosselin) riding instructor. The FBI spinoff, from Universal Television and Wolf Entertainment, stars Julian McMahon, Kellan Lutz, Roxy Sternberg, Keisha Castle-Hughes and Nathaniel Arcand.

David E. Kelley’s hit freshman ABC drama series, Big Sky, continues to bulk up its cast with the addition of five high profile recurring guest stars, Michelle Forbes, Britt Robertson, Michael Raymond-James, Ryan Dorsey and Omar Metwally. They join recently cast new series regular Ted Levine, who plays powerful ranch owner Horst Kleinsasse, and Kyle Schmid, who will recur as his second-born son John Wayne Kleinsasse. The crime thriller series, created by Kelley based on C.J Box’s book, follows private detective Cassie Dewell (Kylie Bunbury) and ex-cop Jenny Hoyt (Katheryn Winnick) who join forces to search for two sisters who have been kidnapped by a truck driver on a remote highway in Montana. But when they discover that these are not the only girls who have disappeared in the area, they must race against the clock to stop the killer before another woman is taken.

Netflix’s drama-thriller series, Pieces of Her, starring Oscar nominee Toni Collette and Bella Heathcote, has added Jessica Barden, Omari Hardwick, David Wenham, Joe Dempsie, and Jacob Scipio to its ensemble cast. The series adaptation is based on the author Karin Slaughter’s thriller novel of the same name. Pieces of Her will be set in a sleepy Georgia town where a random act of violence sets off an unexpected chain of events for 30-year-old Andy Oliver (Heathcote) and her mother Laura (Collette). Desperate for answers, Andy embarks on a dangerous journey across America, drawing her towards the dark, hidden heart of her family.

David Magidoff has been added to the cast of Showtime’s Dexter revival set in the upstate New York town of Iron Lake. He will co-star opposite Michael C. Hall, Clancy Brown, Julia Jones, Alano Miller, Johnny Sequoyah, and Jack Alcott in the 10-episode limited series, which begins production next month in Massachusetts. Magidoff will play Teddy, a quirky new cop who is a little scared of his boss, Police Chief Angela Bishop (Jones). The original series, which ran from 2008-13, followed Dexter Morgan (Hall), a complicated and conflicted blood-spatter expert for the Miami Police Department who moonlighted as a serial killer.

Apple TV+ has renewed its first non-English language original series, the Israeli espionage thriller drama, Tehran, for a second season. Tehran tells the story of Mossad agent, Tamar Rabinyan, who goes deep undercover on a dangerous mission in Tehran that places her and everyone around her in dire jeopardy.

Just three episodes into The Blacklist’s eighth season, NBC’s long-running drama has been picked up for a ninth season. The series stars James Spader as Raymond "Red" Reddington, a former U.S. Navy officer turned high-profile criminal who voluntarily surrenders to the FBI after eluding capture for decades. The cast also includes Megan Boone, Diego Klattenhoff, Amir Arison, Hisham Tawfiq, Laura Sohn, and Harry Lennix.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up, featuring the mystery short story, "The Bucket List," written by Ang Pompano and read by actor Teya Juarez.

Read or Dead discussed books that make use of unique formats to tell their story.

Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Gregg Hurwitz, bestselling author of 22 thrillers including the ORPHAN X series.

Wrong Place, Write Crime welcomed Julie Holmes to discuss her novel, Murder in Plane Sight.

On the latest It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club, New York Times bestseller author, Ellery Adams, stopped by for a look at Ink and Shadows, No. 4 in her Secret, Book & Scone Society Series.

The featured guests on Queer Writers of Crime were authors C.S. Poe and Gregory Ashe, who put their heads together and co-wrote A Friend in the Dark (An Auden O'Callaghan Mystery).