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

Producers Esmail Corp (Mr. Robot) and K Period Media (Manchester By The Sea) are teaming up with Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon (The Age Of Shadows) on an English and Korean-language movie adaptation of the psychological thriller, The Hole, by Korean author Hye-Young Pyun. The story follows Ogi, who wakes from a coma after causing a major car accident that took his wife’s life and left him paralyzed. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Ogi is neglected and left alone in his bed but soon notices his mother-in-law in their abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant, and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started. As he tries to escape, Ogi discovers more about his wife and his own role in the troubled state of their relationship.

Victoria Asare-Archer (lead writer on Netflix’s Harlan Coben adaptation, Missing You) has been tapped to adapt C.M. Ewan’s thriller novel, The House Hunt, for Sony Pictures Television-backed Eleventh Hour Films. The House Hunt centers on the story of an everyday young couple, Lucy and Sam, who are selling their recently renovated dream house, but one viewing turns into a nightmare and events spiral beyond their control.

Noomi Rapace is set to star in the psychological thriller, Reckoner, written and helmed by Nissar Modi (writer of feature Z For Zachariah) who will be making his movie directorial debut. Rapace is replacing Christina Hendricks who is no longer attached due to scheduling conflicts. The project centers on an affluent woman (Rapace) and her carefully constructed life as it's disrupted by a young man connected to a tightly held secret from her past.

TELEVISION/SMALL SCREEN

Jessica Biel (The Sinner) and Elizabeth Banks (Call Jane) will exec produce and star in The Better Sister, a thriller based on the novel by Alafair Burke. In a competitive situation, the project has landed at Prime Video with a series order. The plot line follows the story of Chloe (Biel), who moves through the world with her handsome lawyer husband Adam and teenage son Ethan by her side while her estranged sister Nicky (Banks) struggles to stay clean and hustles to make ends meet. When Adam is brutally murdered, the prime suspect sends shockwaves through the family, laying bare long-buried secrets.

Even before the debut of the new crime drama series, Cross, based on the best-selling Alex Cross book series by James Patterson, Amazon Prime Video is already planning for a second season. The drama stars Aldis Hodge as a detective and forensic psychologist uniquely capable of digging into the psyches of killers and their victims in order to identify — and ultimately capture — the murderers. Being added to the second season are Jeanine Mason, playing a brilliant, ambitious, and vengeful judge; Matthew Lillard, playing a ruthless, self-made business tycoon; and Wes Chatham, playing a hard-edged military veteran turned farmer with far-right political views and sensitive heart.

All Creatures Great and Small writer, Jamie Crichton, is taking on a series for ITV, I Fought the Law, about the fight to repeal the notorious 800-year-old double jeopardy law in the UK. Based on Ann Ming’s book, For the Love of Julie, the series tells the heart-breaking story of Ming’s 15-year-long battle for her daughter Julie’s murderer to face justice. Ming’s daughter was found in the bathroom of her house in 1990, 80 days after she had disappeared, and the man who killed her was twice acquitted following mistrials before eventually admitting to the murder. The archaic double jeopardy law meant he couldn’t be tried twice for the same crime and it is this law that Ming and her family successfully overturned.

Emily The Criminal, the 2022 crime thriller starring Aubrey Plaza, is the latest movie to be turned into a television series. Legendary Television is developing a series based on the film, which was written and directed by John Patton Ford with Plaza, who will not star in the TV version. The film followed Emily (Plaza), who is saddled with student debt and locked out of the job market due to a minor criminal record. Desperate for income, she takes a shady gig as a "dummy shopper," buying goods with stolen credit cards supplied by a handsome and charismatic middleman named Youcef (Theo Rossi). Faced with a series of dead-end job interviews, Emily soon finds herself seduced by the quick cash and illicit thrills of black-market capitalism, and increasingly interested in her mentor Youcef. Together, they hatch a plan to bring their business to the next level in Los Angeles.

CBS became the first broadcast network to present its fall schedule, and even announced the lineup for the entire 2024-25 season. Returning crime dramas include NCIS and NCIS: Sydney; the FBI-themed trio (FBI, FBI: International, and FBI: Most Wanted); Elspeth; S.W.A.T.; The Equalizer; Tracker; and Blue Bloods, although the network also confirmed this would be that series' last, wrapping up in December. The new crime dramas include Matlock, a reimagining of the classic TV series of the same name, which stars Kathy Bates as the brilliant septuagenarian attorney, Madeline "Matty" Matlock; NCIS: Origins, which follows a young Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Austin Stowell) in 1991, years before the events of NCIS; and Watson, starring Morris Chestnut as Dr. John Watson from Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series.

CBS also ordered its first new series for the 2025-26 broadcast season, giving a green light to Fire Country spinoff, Sheriff Country, headlined by Morena Baccarin. Baccarin stars as straight-shooting sheriff Mickey Fox, the stepsister of Cal Fire’s division chief Sharon Leone (Diane Farr of Fire Country), who investigates criminal activity as she patrols the streets of small-town Edgewater while contending with her ex-con father and a mysterious incident involving her wayward daughter.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

On Crime Time FM, Chris Harding Thornton chatted with Paul Burke about her new novel, Little Underworld; being a seventh generation Nebraskan; noir; Pickard County Atlas; and music.

This week's episode of the Crime Cafe podcast featured Debbi Mack's interview with crime writer Charles Salzberg, author of the Henry Swann Detective series.

On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed books about cults.

The latest Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine podcast featured multiple O. Henry Award winner, Sheila Kohler, reading her suspenseful, evocative tale, "The Changing Room," from the January/February 2021 issue.

The Pick Your Poison podcast looked at a toxin that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, been associated with the Salem Witch Trials, and is the source of modern hallucinogens.