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

Roadside Attractions and Vertical have acquired U.S. rights to Firebrand, an historical thriller starring Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina) and Jude Law (The Talented Mr. Ripley) that premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film is directed by Karim Aïnouz (Invisible Life) and slated for an exclusive theatrical release on June 21, 2024. Based on the bestselling historical novel, Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle, the film follows legendary Queen of England, Catherine Parr (Vikander), and her quest to survive the perilous last months in the life of her ailing and abusive husband, Henry VIII (Law). Eddie Marsan (21 Grams), Sam Riley (Control), Simon Russell Beale (The Death of Stalin) and Erin Doherty (The Crown) co-star.

Freestyle Digital Media has acquired North American rights to Julia Verdin’s feature, Maya, which will begin its limited theatrical release on Jan. 21, 2024 with a screening at the Chandler International Film Festival in Arizona, followed by a Q&A presented by anti-trafficking organization Cece’s Hope Center. The movie follows Maya (Isabella Feliciana), who "is raised in a household stricken by her father’s abandonment and her mother’s (Patricia Velasquez) ensuing alcoholism. She seeks an escape from her mother’s abusive boyfriend by confiding in a man she meets online, who convinces her to run away. Unbeknownst to Maya, she has been lured into a child trafficking scheme where her confidant quickly becomes her pimp, along with an older captive, Kayla (Rumer Willis). While Maya fights to understand the difference between love and manipulation, her mother must fight through her addiction to bring her daughter home."

Bridgerton standout, Simone Ashley, will star in This Tempting Madness, a new indie directed by Jennifer E. Montgomery from her script written with husband Andrew M. Davis. Inspired by a true story, This Tempting Madness is a psychological thriller about a young woman (Ashley) who awakens from a coma grievously injured, with her memory fractured, and her husband arrested. But as she puts together the pieces of her past, she starts to question her own actions — and her perception of reality.

TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN

CBS has handed a straight-to-series order to Watson, from writer Craig Sweeny (Elementary) for the 2024-25 broadcast season. Morris Chestnut is set to play the title role and executive produce the medical drama inspired by the characters from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Watson is described as a medical show with a strong investigative spine, featuring a modern version of one of history’s greatest detectives as he turns his attention from solving crimes to solving medical mysteries. The series lives in a universe where Holmes has been killed off, something Conan Doyle reportedly intended to do with The Final Problem. In Watson, a year after the death of his friend and partner Sherlock Holmes at the hands of Moriarty, Dr. John Watson (Chestnut) resumes his medical career as the head of a clinic dedicated to treating rare disorders. Watson’s old life isn’t done with him, though—Moriarty and Watson are set to write their own chapter of a story that has fascinated audiences for more than a century.

Gibbs is returning to the NCIS universe as the lead of a new CBS drama, which serves as a prequel to the long-running procedural. The network has given a straight-to-series order to NCIS: Origins, about young Leroy Jethro Gibbs, for the 2024-25 broadcast season. The project comes from the two actors who have portrayed Gibbs on NCIS, Mark Harmon and his son Sean Harmon, veteran NCIS writers-producers, Gina Lucita Monreal and David J. North, as well as CBS Studios, which is behind the NCIS franchise. Narrated by Mark Harmon, NCIS: Origins begins in 1991, years prior to the events of NCIS. In the new series, Gibbs starts his career as a newly minted special agent at the fledgling NCIS Camp Pendleton office where he forges his place on a gritty, ragtag team led by NCIS legend Mike Franks. (On the mothership series, Franks has been a recurring character played by Muse Watson who helped Gibbs when he needed a sounding board on hard cases.)

Apple TV+ greenlit a fifth season of Slow Horses, which stars Gary Oldman in the adaptation of Mick Herron’s novels. The fifth outing of Slow Horses will be adapted from Herron’s Spook Street. Everyone is suspicious when resident tech nerd Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) has a glamorous new girlfriend, but when increasingly bizarre events occur across the city, it falls to the Slow Horses to work out how everything is connected. The ensemble cast includes Oldman, who plays central character Jackson Lamb, along with Academy Award-nominee Kristin Scott Thomas and fellow nominee Jonathan Pryce, Jack Lowden, Saskia Reeves, Rosalind Eleazar, Samuel West, Sophie Okonedo, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, and Kadiff Kirwan.

Fabien Frankel (House of the Dragon) and Alison Oliver (Saltburn) have been cast in key roles in an upcoming HBO crime drama series from Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby. Starring Mark Ruffalo, the Untitled Brad Ingelsby Task Force Project is set in the working class suburbs outside of Philadelphia where an FBI agent (Ruffalo) heads a Task Force to put an end to a string of drug-house robberies. Frankel will play Anthony, an integral member of the task force. Oliver will portray Lizzie, an under-performing state police officer who is added to the team.

Principal photography has begun in Iceland on the six-part, English-language drama, The Darkness, based on the best-selling thriller series by Ragnar Jónasson. The Darkness, a joint project of CBS Studios and Stampede Ventures, follows Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir (Lena Olin) as she investigates a shocking murder case whilst coming to terms with her own personal traumas. Facing early retirement and forced to take on a new partner, she is determined to find the killer, even if it means putting her own life in danger. Recently added to the cast are Jack Bannon, Douglas Henshall, and Björn Hlynur Haraldsson.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The BBC's In Our Time podcast host Melvyn Bragg and guests discussed Edgar Allan Poe, famous for his Gothic tales of horror, madness, and the dark interiors of the mind, such as "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Tell-Tale Heart." As well as tapping at our deepest fears in poems such as "The Raven," Poe pioneered detective fiction with his character C. Auguste Dupin in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. After his early death, a rival rushed out a biography to try to destroy Poe's reputation, but he has only become more famous over the years as a cultural icon as well as an author.

On Crime Time FM, Maxim Jakubowski, publisher, editor, bookseller, writer, and critic, chats with Paul Burke about his new novel, Just a Girl with a Gun.

The latest episode of the Crime Cafe featured Debbi Mack's interview with Kim Hays, a a dual citizen of the US and Switzerland, who is author of the Polizei Bern Series, featuring detectives Giuliana Linder and Renzo Donatelli.

On the Writer's Detective Bureau, Detective Adam Richardson answered questions about California’s Alcoholic Beverage Control agency; who investigates murders involving the military; and the surprising limitation on Tribal Police law enforcement powers.

The latest podcast episode from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine whisked listeners off to Paris for an adventure filled with fine food and wine, paired with a side of revenge, in "City of Light" by Josh Pachter, one of EQMM's most prolific contributors and translators.