THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES
Oscar-nominated actor, Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), is making her feature directing debut with the psychological thriller, Pale Horse, scheduled to shoot this fall. Set in the Pacific Northwest, Pale Horse follows Naia, an esteemed, yet reclusive African-American YA book author who is living with MS. When Naia decides to shelter the man who escaped captivity with her long-missing brother, she finds herself caught up in a diabolical mystery.
According to Deadline, Warner Bros won a "wild spec auction" for the Tyler Marceca script, Stay Frosty, with Idris Elba attached to star and Sam Hargrave to direct. The story follows a man who has to figure out who wants him dead and why after miraculously surviving a bullet to the head. He needs to stop the assassin while still making it back home in time to spend Christmas with his son. As Deadline notes, it gives Elba a franchise play in a vehicle that is a bit of a John Wick-type character in a throwback to ’80s high-action Christmas movies that include Die Hard and Lethal Weapon.
Production has begun in Puerto Rico on Emmett/Furla Films's thriller, The Fortress, with Jesse Metcalfe, Bruce Willis, Chad Michael Murray, and Kelly Greyson starring for director Cullen Bressack. The franchise has been constructed as a trilogy, with the second and third installments shooting back-to-back. The story was written by Alan Horsnail and revolves around a top-secret resort for retired U.S. intelligence officers. A group of criminals led by Balzary (Murray) breach the compound, hellbent on revenge on Robert (Willis), forcing the retired officer and his son (Metcalfe) to save the day.
Blair Underwood (Quantico) is set to direct, produce, and star in Viral, an indie thriller from York Films. Underwood plays Andrew, who falls into paranoia after his wife goes missing. The only way out of the self-destructive cycle seems to be through his new girlfriend Emilia, but she has her own psychological trauma to deal with. Are they strong enough to get past their own nightmares and mental illnesses to find true happiness together? The film originally was set to shoot last year but was postponed due to the pandemic.
Blake Lively (The Rhythm Section) is set to star in and produce the Netflix original film, Lady Killer, based on the Dark Horse Comic of the same name, with Oscar winner Diablo Cody writing the screenplay adaptation. Lively will play Josie Schuller, who gives every appearance of being the perfect 1950 housewife but who leads a secret live as a trained killer for hire when she’s not catering to her family’s needs.
Ben Mendelsohn is set to star opposite Daisy Ridley in Neil Burger’s upcoming psychological thriller, The Marsh King’s Daughter, based on Karen Dionne’s thriller of the same name. Mendelsohn will play Jacob Holbrook, the infamous "Marsh King," who years ago kept his young daughter, Helena, and her mother captive in the wilderness for years. After a lifetime of trying to escape her past, the now grown Helena (Ridley) is forced to face her demons when her father unexpectedly returns.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
MRC Television and Johnson and Bergman’s T-Street banner have optioned Don Winslow’s bestselling debut novel, A Cool Breeze on the Underground, the first in a five-book series that will be developed for the small screen. Bad Education director, Cory Finley, will write, direct and executive produce, and Winslow will also serve as an executive producer. Winslow was a private detective when he wrote that first novel, long before his bestselling The Cartel trilogy (in production at Fox) or The Force (in production at 20th Century Studios). A Cool Breeze on the Underground introduces Neal Carey as he becomes a private investigator working for a covert New England organization called The Bank, which caters to exclusive wealthy clients. He’s assigned to find the rebellious teen daughter of a prominent senator who has gone underground in the violent London punk scene, rife with crime, drugs and danger.
NBC has picked up another Law & Order spinoff, this time going inside a criminal defense firm. Titled Law & Order: For the Defense, the new series will "take an unbiased look inside a criminal defense firm." Carol Mendelsohn (CSI) will serve as showrunner and executive producer alongside franchise boss Dick Wolf. For the Defense joins Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which has been renewed through Season 24, and the most recent addition to the franchise, Law & Order: Organized Crime, which marked longtime SVU star Christopher Meloni’s return after ten years away from the show.
Dick Wolf is also moving into half-hour drama with his latest series set at Amazon’s IMDb TV. Deadline reported that the free streaming service has ordered On Call, which follows a pair of police officers on patrol in Long Beach, CA. Each episode will track the duo as they respond to a new radio call, arriving on the scene to resolve an incident.
Elizabeth Olsen will play infamous Texas ax murderer, Candy Montgomery, in a limited series on HBO Max. Love and Death, written by David E. Kelley and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, is the second streaming limited series project to revolve around Montgomery, who killed her church-going friend with an ax in the 1980s. (Elisabeth Moss is playing Candy in a Hulu series from Robin Veith with Nick Antosca). The HBO Max version is based on the book, Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs, and a collection of articles from Texas Monthly.
The Crown star, Claire Foy, is set to lead a new thriller from streamer BritBox U.K. The eight-part thriller, Marlow, centers on feuding families the Marlows and the Wyatts, who have existed in the "Edgelands" of the Thames Estuary for centuries. Foy stars as Evie Wyatt, who was born and bred in the Estuary and returns to the Edgelands — the place where she lost her father to a firestorm 15 years ago — in search of answers. However, drawn back into conflict with the Marlow clan, Evie finds herself in a battle with its ageing patriarch, Tom Marlow.
Fox has ordered its immigration/mob-crime drama pilot, The Cleaning Lady, to series for the 2021-22 season. The show stars Elodie Yung as a whip-smart doctor who comes to the U.S. for a medical treatment to save her ailing son. But when the system fails and pushes her into hiding, she becomes a cleaning lady for the mob and starts playing the game by her own rules.
USA Network has firmed up the cast for its upcoming Nash Bridges revival, which will return as a two-hour movie with stars Don Johnson (Nash Bridges), Cheech Marin (Joe Dominguez) and Jeff Perry (Harvey Leek) reprising their roles. Joining them are new cast members Diarra Kilpatrick, Bonnie Somerville, Joe Dinicol, Alexia Garcia, Angela Ko, and Paul James. The movie brings Johnson and Marin back together as elite investigators for the San Francisco Police Department Special Investigations Unit.
The Irregulars has been canceled by Netflix after one season, which is surprising considering it came in at No. 1 on Nielsen’s Top 10 SVOD rankings the week after it premiered. Based on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and set in Victorian London, "The Irregulars" follows a gang of troubled street teens who are manipulated into solving crimes for "the sinister Doctor Watson and his mysterious business partner, the elusive Sherlock Holmes." As the crimes take on a horrifying supernatural edge and a dark power emerges, it’ll be up to the Irregulars to come together to save not only London but the entire world.
ABC renewed the freshman drama, Big Sky, for a second season. The series, which is based on The Highway series of books by C.J. Box, stars Katheryn Winnick and Kylie Bunbury. Bunbury plays Cassie Dewell, a private investigator who runs the Dewell & Hoyt agency, while Winnick plays Jenny Hoyt, an ex-cop-turned-private investigator who, despite being separated from her husband (briefly played by Ryan Phillippe), still does freelance work for the agency. The pair have joined forces to search for two sisters who have been kidnapped by a truck driver on a remote highway in Montana.
The CW network renewed Kung Fu for a second season. The series follows a young Chinese American woman, Nicky Shen (played by Olivia Liang), whose quarter-life crisis causes her to drop out of college and go on a life-changing journey to an isolated monastery in China. But when she returns to San Francisco, she finds her hometown is overrun with crime and corruption, and her own parents Jin (Tzi Ma) and Mei-Li (Kheng Hua Tan) are at the mercy of a powerful Triad. Shen relies on friends, her martial arts skills, and Shaolin values to protect her community and bring criminals to justice…all while searching for the ruthless assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor Pei-Ling (Vanessa Kai) and is now targeting her.
ITV crime drama, Grace, starring John Simm, has been renewed for season two following the broadcast of just one episode. The drama debuted earlier this year with a feature-length episode, and the positive response was enough to warrant a commission for season two. The first episode, based on Peter James’s Roy Grace books, debuted back in March this year, featuring Simm (Doctor Who and Life on Mars) leading the cast as the titular Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace.
Chad Rook is set for a recurring role in Joe Pickett, Spectrum Originals’s drama series based on C.J. Box’s bestselling novels. Joe Pickett follows a game warden (Michael Dormann) and his family as they navigate the changing political and socio-economic climate in a small rural town in Wyoming. Surrounded by rich history and vast wildlife, the township hides decades of schemes and secrets that are yet to be uncovered. Rook will play Deputy McLanahan.
Jamie McShane is joining CBS’s CSI: Vegas, a sequel to the mothership CSI series, in a recurring role. Additionally, Paul Guilfoyle, who played Jim Brass on the original, will return to reprise his role in the sequel series, appearing in two episodes. The sequel series opens a new chapter in Las Vegas, the city where it all began. Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City. McShane will play Anson Wix, a civil attorney.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
Suspense Radio welcomed back bestselling author J.A. Jance to talk about her latest book, Missing and Endangered.
The latest Mysteryrats Maze podcast features the short story "Not a Penny More" (Strand magazine) written by Jon Land and read by actor Larry Mattox.
Speaking of Mysteries spoke with Mariah Fredericks about Death of a Showman, the fourth installment of her series featuring lady’s maid Jane Prescott.
Meet the Thriller Author chatted with Mia P. Manansala, a writer and book coach from Chicago who loves books, baking, and bad-ass women. Her debut novel, Arsenic and Adobo, was released May 4 and is the first in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series.
In honor of Cinco de Mayo, It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club highlighted three Hispanic mystery authors.
Literature professor, Tammy Bird, stopped by Queer Writers of Crime to chat about her gritty suspense and thriller stories including her latest novel, The Book of Promises, set in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
Matt Fitzpatrick stopped by Wrong Place, Write Crime to discuss his Justin McGee series.
Writers Detective Bureau was back from a hiatus with host, Adam Richardson, interviewing Marc Cameron about his career in the US Marshals Service, advice for a successful writing career, and details on his new book, Bone Rattle.
The Read or Dead podcast looked at crime novels that feature dinner parties gone wrong.
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