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

Actor and influential Hong Kong action filmmaker, Donnie Yen, is set to star in a feature adaptation of the classic ’70s TV series, Kung Fu, based on a screenplay by Stephen Chin. Stephen L’Hereaux will also produce, and Ed Spielman, creator of the original Kung Fu television series, will executive produce. The ABC drama starred David Carradine as a Shaolin monk and elite martial arts practitioner who fled China after his master was murdered. He wandered the Old West helping the downtrodden and weathering rampant racism while eluding assassins.

Sam Hargrave, having found his next high-octane action vehicle following Netflix's Extraction, is set to direct an adaptation of Kill Them All for Paramount Pictures. Based on the popular graphic novel by Kyle M. Starks, James Coyne will adapt the script for the big screen. The graphic novel follows an elite female assassin who finds out she is going to be "terminated" by the criminal syndicate she’s been loyal to and decides to take them out first. Joining forces with a hard-drinking ex-cop, she embarks on a relentless, action-packed assault through the fifteen floors of the syndicate’s headquarters. Her ultimate target: the Boss, with whom she has a complicated past.

Hanway Films will represent worldwide sales for Winter Of The Crow, a Cold War thriller starring Oscar-nominated actress Lesley Manville and currently shooting in Warsaw. Based on a short story by Nobel Prize and International Booker-winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, the film is set in what is described as "the surreal and cinematic world of 1981 Warsaw." When martial law is imposed overnight, shutting down the country, visiting British psychiatry professor Dr. Joan Andrews (Manville) arrives just as taxis have been replaced by tanks, and citizens are treated like criminals. But as chaos engulfs the city, she witnesses a brutal murder by the secret police. In mortal danger and trapped as Poland is closed down, Joan becomes a hunted fugitive.

Henry Cavill assembles The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare in a new trailer. Inspired by true events and based on declassified files of the British War Department, the Guy Ritchie-helmed film tells the tale of a top secret combat unit formed by Winston Churchill alongside some military folks and a certain James Bond author Ian Fleming, sent on a mission to fight the Nazis by unconventional means, and preceding the British SAS and Black Ops warfare. The film also stars Cary Elwes, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Babs Olusamokun, Henrique Zaga, Til Schweiger, and Henry Golding.

TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN

Michael Shannon is set to play assassinated President Garfield with Matthew Macfadyen as his killer in a new series for Netflix, Death By Lightning, based on the book Destiny Of The Republic by Candice Millard. The series will bring to life the stranger-than-fiction true story of James Garfield, reluctant 20th president of the United States, who was inaugurated in 1881 and assassinated later that year by Charles Guiteau, who felt he had played a major role in Garfield’s election.

Amanda Seyfried will star in Peacock's limited series adaptation of the Liz Moore thriller novel, Long Bright River. Per the official logline, the show "tells the story of Mickey (Seyfried), a police officer who patrols a Philadelphia neighborhood hard-hit by the opioid crisis. When a series of murders begins in the neighborhood, Mickey realizes that her personal history might be related to the case." Moore is adapting her book for the screen alongside Nikki Toscano (The Offer, Hunters), with both also serving as executive producers and Toscano serving as showrunner.

HBO is developing a limited series based on the 2009 Gillian Flynn novel, Dark Places. The official logline description states: "Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in the famous 1985 ‘Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.’ She survived—and famously testified that her teenage brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, a pair of mother/daughter true crime ‘detectives’ locate a grownup Libby and pump her for details, believing that Ben is innocent. Libby, having spent her youth working the talk show circuit, hopes to once again turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings —for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist traps, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer."

It’s definitely the end of an era on NBC's Law & Order as Sam Waterston announced he's leaving the show after playing District Attorney Jack McCoy for more than 400 episodes. His last show will air on February 22. As Waterston exits, the cast will be joined by Tony Goldwyn (Oppenheimer, Scandal), who will portray the new district attorney. Waterston made his debut on the series in the Season 5 premiere (1994) and went on to snag a SAG Award and three Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1997, 1999 and 2000, for his portrayal of McCoy. He has also reprised the role in various other projects including spinoff shows: Law & Order Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Trial by Jury.

Although details aren’t available just yet, Apple TV+ has given the go-ahead for a second season of Hijack, one of the top dramas on the streamer after landing on the Nielsen Streaming Originals Top 10 list. Idris Elba starred alongside Max Beesley who played Sam Nelson, an accomplished business negotiator forced to use his guile to save the lives of passengers onboard a hijacked plane making its way to London. Archie Panjabi and Ben Miles were also featured in the cast.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke with Anna O author Matthew Blake; discussed homicidal somnambulism; and then talked to Guy Kennaway, author of Good Scammer, while taking a look at some of the best books ever set in the Caribbean.

On Crime Time FM, former CIA analyst David McCloskey chatted with Paul Burke about his new exhilarating spy thriller Moscow X; Russia; Boyars; world views; and ubiquitous technological surveillance.

In the latest episode of the Spybrary spy book podcast, host Shane Whaley invited guest Jeff Circle, author, veteran, avid spy novel reader and the head honcho behind The Writers Dossier to embark on a clandestine mission behind the Iron Curtain. As part of the Dead Drop 5 series, Jeff Circle shares his top five best spy thriller books that he would take with him to East Berlin.

On Read or Dead, Kendra Winchester and special guest Liberty Hardy talked about old and new books, "Something old and something new, one host borrowed, the other dressed in blue."

The latest Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine podcast featured the suspenseful tale of a nude model who finds herself posing for an eccentric and rather creepy artist, in "Rendering" by Sophia Lynch, one of the latest entries in EQMM's Department of First Stories.

The Pick Your Poison podcast took a look at a chemical used to make explosives that's also used for weight loss.