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

MGM has landed the rights to the novel, The Husbands, from best-selling author, Chandler Baker, with Kristen Wiig attached to star and produce along with Plan B Entertainment. Baker will adapt for the screen, marking her feature screenwriting debut, and also serve as an executive producer on the film. The Husbands follows an overworked mother who, while house hunting in a nice suburban neighborhood, meets a group of high-powered women with enviably supportive husbands. When she agrees to take on a legal case involving the untimely death of one resident’s husband, she risks exposing not only the secrets at the heart of her own marriage, but the true secret to having-it-all, one worth killing for.

Sam Worthington and Phoebe Tonkin are starring in Matt Nable’s directorial debut, Transfusion. The thriller, which also features Nable, is about a former Special Forces operative thrust into the criminal underworld to keep his only son from being taken from him. Production began in Sydney earlier this week. The film is already scheduled for a theatrical release through Madman Entertainment in Australia and New Zealand but will be shopped for international sales at Cannes.

Matthew Modine, Embeth Davidtz, and Arian Moayed have boarded the Studiocanal Liam Neeson thriller, Retribution, in key roles. The story follows a banking executive whose life is thrown upside down when a bomb is placed inside his car with himself and his family. The banker’s children are forced to go through the harrowing events with him.

Jessica Henwick, who recently landed one of the leads in the new Matrix movie, has rounded out the cast for the next installment of Knives Out, with Daniel Craig returning to star and Rian Johnson to write and direct. Dave Bautista, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, Madelyn Cline, and Edward Norton were also recently added to the cast. Plot details are unknown at this time other than Craig returning to solve another mystery involving a large cast of suspects. It is also unknown who Henwick will be playing. Production is set to start this summer in Greece.

AJ Michalka has joined the cast of the upcoming Ray Donovan feature-length film. Michalka will play the younger version of Abby in the film, which will continue Ray’s journey following the hit drama series’ seven-season run on Showtime. Star Liev Schreiber returns in his titular role and is co-writing the script along with series showrunner David Hollander, who also directs. The new film picks up where season seven left off following the series’ surprise cancellation last year, with Mickey (Jon Voight) in the wind and Ray (Schreiber) determined to find and stop him before he can cause any more carnage. It will also weave together the present-day fallout from the Donovan/Sullivan feud with Ray and Mickey’s origin story from 30 years ago.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Apple has unveiled the ensemble cast for Surface, its upcoming psychological thriller series from High Fidelity co-creator and exec producer, Veronica West. Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Stephan James, Ari Graynor, François Arnaud, Marianne Jean Baptiste, and Millie Brady join the previously announced Gugu Mbatha-Raw in the series from Apple Studios and Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. Additionally, Emmy-nominated Sam Miller (I May Destroy You; Luther) will serve as director and executive producer on the eight-episode first season. Starring Mbatha-Raw as Sophie, Surface is described as "an elevated thriller" about a woman’s quest to rebuild her life after a suicide attempt, and her struggle to remember – and understand – everything that led up to the moment when she jumped.

Megan Boone is leaving The Blacklist at the end of the NBC drama’s currently airing eighth season. She has starred on the series as FBI agent, Elizabeth "Liz" Keen, alongside James Spader as criminal mastermind, Raymond "Red" Reddington, since the show premiered in 2013. Apparently, the decision was mutual between the actress and producers and has been in the works since before The Blacklist was renewed for Season 9 in January, giving the writers time to plot out the end of Liz’s storyline in next week’s Season 8 finale. Along with Boone and Spader, the show also stars Diego Klattenhoff, Amir Arison, Hisham Tawfiq, Laura Sohn and Harry Lennix.

HBO will release a documentary offshoot of Ronan Farrow's book, Catch and Kill. The TV project, titled Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tales, will consist of six half-hour episodes recreating Farrow's "interviews with whistleblowers, journalists, private investigators and other sources as he investigated allegations of sexual misconduct around the now-jailed Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, former Today anchor Matt Lauer, and other key media industry figures." Directed by Emmy winners Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the project will debut on HBO with two back-to-back episodes on July 12 and new episodes on subsequent Mondays.

As The Killing Times reported, Channel 4 in the UK has revealed a slate of new crime dramas, including a first-look at the new version of Dalgliesh – based on PD James’s best-selling novels and starring Bertie Carvel – in a new trailer.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Mysterious Bookshop held a virtual Q&A with author James Ellroy that featured a deep dive into his new novel, Widespread Panic.

Read or Dead celebrated Pride Month by talking about books by authors who identify as LGBTQ+ or have written amazing stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters.

On the Queer Writers of Crime podcast, Shane K Morton was this week's featured guest. Shane has been a playwright and musical theatre actor before turning his hand to LGBTQ+ romance, mystery and YA novels. He also writes darker horror/mystery under the name Sean Azinsalt.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up featuring the first chapter of Iron Goddess by Dharma Kelleher, read by actor Casey Ballard. The episode celebrates Pride month as it features a mystery about an LGBTQ+ character written by an LGBTQ+ author.

Writer Types featured an all-Scandinavian episode, as host, Eric Beetner, was joined by Icelandic authors, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (Girls Who Lie), Sólveig Pálsdóttir (Silenced), and Quentin Bates, a British author who writes about Iceland (the Officer Gunnhilder series); and from Sweden, Carin Gerhardsen (Black Ice, the Hammarby series) also stopped by.

Speaking of Mysteries spoke with Laurie R. King about her 17th Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes crime fiction novel, Castle Shade, in which the couple is asked by Queen Marie of Romania to investigate a threat made against her daughter, requiring Russell and Holmes to travel to Castle Bran in Transylvania.

Andy Weir, who took the publishing world by storm with his book, The Martian, stopped by Suspense Radio to talk about his latest novel, Project Hail Mary, which follows an astronaut who has to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery to prevent an extinction-level threat to our species.

Meet the Thriller Author spoke with Don Bentley, author of the Matt Drake thriller series as well as Target Acquired, a Tom Clancy Jack Ryan, Jr. novel.

Wrong Place, Write Crime host, Frank Zafiro, was joined by debut novelist Sarah Adlahka; got book recommendations from Shawn Reilly Simmons, Scott Kikkawa, and Carmen Jaramillo; and spoke with film director/writer, DJ Holloway.

John Hoda, host of My Favorite Detective Stories, chatted with Tammy Euliano, MD, a practicing anesthesiologist who has also written award-winning short fiction. The medical thriller, Fatal Intent, is her debut novel.

In the latest Writers Detective Bureau podcast, veteran Police Detective, Adam Richardson, walked through how a detective gets a search warrant; how to obtain phone records in a missing person investigation; and whether police officers get involved in arson investigations in California.

Crime Time FM welcomed authors Sarah Pinborough (Behind Her Eyes) and Alex North (The Whisper Man).

THEATRE

Theatrical productions continue to return, with one of the latest being a staging of Agatha Christie’s Spider’s Web at Scottsdale's Desert Stages Theatre Mainstage Friday, June 25 through Sunday, July 11. Directed by Dan Ashlock Jr., the plot sees the Queen of Mystery poking fun at the genre that made her famous. (Note that there will be no show on July 4 due to the Independence Day holiday.)