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

Two-time Oscar nominee John Travolta (Pulp Fiction), Emmy and Tony winner Mandy Patinkin (Homeland), and SAG nominee Dermot Mulroney (August Osage County) have been set to headline the JFK thriller, November 1963, from two-time Oscar nominee Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields). The film sheds light on the crime group, the Chicago Outfit, and their alleged involvement in the assassination and draws directly from first-hand accounts, including insights from the family of crime boss Sam Giancana. John Travolta will star as Johnny Roselli, a key figure in organized crime and the Outfit’s man on the West Coast and in Vegas. Mandy Patinkin will star as Anthony Accardo, a powerful and calculating head of the Chicago Outfit, considered one of the most powerful crime bosses in America at the time. Dermot Mulroney will step into the role of Chuckie Nicoletti, Sam Giancana’s bodyguard and the Outfit’s most notorious South Side hit man.

Netflix and AGBO's adaptation of the Alex North novel, The Whisper Man, is gaining steam with Robert De Niro set to star in the crime thriller. James Ashcroft is on board to direct, with Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer adapting the script. Based on North’s New York Times bestselling novel, The Whisper Man revolves around a widower crime writer who, after his 8-year-old son is abducted, looks to his estranged father, a retired former police detective, for help, only to discover a connection with the decades-old case of a convicted serial killer known as “The Whisper Man.”

Samuel L. Jackson (The Piano Lesson) and Daveed Diggs (Nickel Boys) are set to star in a new hit man thriller from filmmaker Ernest Dickerson (Juice) and Gringo scribe Matthew Stone. Jackson plays Morris Stokes, a recently retired and very opinionated hit man for mob boss Easy-A. When his nephew Leslie (Diggs), is implicated in the theft of the mob’s earnings, Morris gets a call from his old boss that forces him off the golf course and back into action to negotiate one last job: he’s got the weekend to help the kid recover the stolen money or put a bullet in him. Complicating things is the fact that Leslie has a baby on the way

Ben Affleck and Gillian Anderson are set to star in the kidnapping thriller, Animals, for Netflix, with Affleck also directing. Matt Damon was originally attached to star in the film but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. The film follows a mayoral candidate and his wife who must get their hands dirty to save their son after he is kidnapped.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

BAFTA-winner Nick Leather's next project, an as-yet untitled TV series, will reveal the inner workings of UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), told through a story about the 2020 infiltration of the encrypted phone-system EncroChat and how it gave the agency a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to decimate the criminal underworld. There have been more than 3,400 arrests so far including almost 13,300 years of combined sentencing, and the operation is still ongoing.

Bergerac is returning with a 2025 makeover and plenty of global networks are welcoming the iconic detective back. The original series starred John Nettles as the titular crime fighter, Jim Bergerac, and ran for nine seasons between 1981 and 1991. Unlike that show, which had a new storyline in each episode, the modern series from writer Toby Whithouse follows one character-led murder mystery. Bergerac begins the series as a broken man, grappling with grief and alcoholism following his wife’s death. His mother-in-law (Zoe Wanamaker) is concerned he is not putting his daughter (Chloé Sweet Love) first, and when a woman from a wealthy Jersey family is murdered, he has to go through personal struggles to become the formidable investigator he was. Philip Glenister also stars.

The story of California’s most notorious female serial killer, Dorothea Puente, is being turned into a TV series by former Sony Pictures Television Studios President Jeff Frost through his new production company, Bristol Circle Entertainment. The potential series is based on the life of Puente, who opened a boarding house in Sacramento in the 1980s, inviting the poor, the mentally infirm, and homeless to live there, often for free. Hailed as a generous benefactor, Puente, then in her 50s, was in reality murdering her boarders and continuing to cash their social security checks. After evading suspicion for years, in part because of her disarming, matronly demeanor, Puente was ultimately arrested. After a wild trial, she was convicted for three of the murders and spent her last years in prison.

PODCASTS/RADIO

On the latest Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester recommended mysteries and thrillers for Black History Month.

Authors on the Air welcomed Kate Alice Marshall to discuss her new chilling thriller, A Killing Cold.

On Crime Time FM, Anna Sharpe (aka Anna Mazzola) chatted with Craig Sisterson about her new legal thriller, Notes on a Drowning; contemporary vs. historical fiction; misogyny; childhood reading; and condensing the law.