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

Run the Night, an action film starring Chris Pine, has landed at Lionsgate in a deal for worldwide rights. The story centers on a banker, accused of betraying the Dutch mob, who is dumped naked in the heart of Amsterdam with a $10 million bounty on his head. Hunted by the city’s most violent gangs, he must fight his way across the city by dawn to save the lives of his wife and child — revealing he was never just the money guy. Robert Alonzo will direct, in his feature debut, from a script by John Glenn and Alex Davidson.

Malin Akerman (Watchmen) and Michael Jai White (The Dark Knight) are set to lead spy thriller, Spymasters, from writer-director Lance Kawas. Described as a throwback to the "high-stakes erotic thrillers of the ’90s, coupled with modern action and intensity," the film centers on a CIA operative (White) assigned to surveil and possibly eliminate a former lover (Akerman), a dangerous and enigmatic figure within the agency known for her psychological prowess and covert influence over the world’s elite.

Amazon MGM Studios has landed worldwide distribution rights to The Beekeeper 2, with Jason Statham reprising his role in the sequel. Timo Tjahjanto (Nobody 2) is set to direct the film from a screenplay by Kurt Wimmer. The first movie, directed by David Ayer, follows a retired clandestine human-intelligence operative who sets out for revenge after his kind-hearted landlady becomes the victim of a phishing scam that steals millions of dollars from a charity she runs. The sequel is due to be released theatrically in a number of key territories.

Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller are set to co-star opposite Adam Driver in the upcoming film, Paper Tiger. (Johansson and Teller step in for Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, who had to drop out due to other commitments.) James Gray is writing and directing with production set to start next month in New Jersey. The film is described as a tense and gritty story revolving around two brothers who pursue the American Dream—only to become entangled in a scheme that turns out to be too good to be true. As they try to navigate their way through an ever-more dangerous world of corruption and violence, they find themselves and their family brutally terrorized by the Russian "Mafiya." Their bond begins to fray, and betrayal—once utterly unthinkable—now becomes all too possible.

John Wick producers Thunder Road are launching sales on the action film, The Surgeon, which will star Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. The project is written and directed by Roshan Sethi, a physician, Indie Spirit winner, and co-creator of hit Fox series The Resident. The film will follow a retired surgeon (Yeoh) who is abducted and forced to operate on a mystery patient. Though greatly outnumbered, her captors have overlooked her greatest weapon: 35-years of surgical experience, leading to an explosive and brutal confrontation during which she outwits and cuts down her enemies "in a visual style that defies anything you have seen before." Apparently, there are hopes it can become a franchise.

Writer-director Kurtis David Harder has wrapped production on Influencers, a new film following up his acclaimed 2023 Shudder. Cassandra Naud has returned to lead the ensemble, which also includes Georgina Campbell (Barbarian), Lisa Delamar (Survive), Jonathan Whitesell (The 100), Veronica Long (Billy the Kid), and Dylan Playfair (Letterkenny). In Influencers, a social media star—with a chilling fascination with murder and identity theft—is vacationing in Thailand and meets a mysterious woman, leading to unexpected and dangerous consequences.

Spike Lee released the first trailer for his crime thriller, Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington and A$AP Rocky. Written by Alan Fox, the film is loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, which follows a businessman deciding whether or not to use his wealth to further his career or save a child’s life. Both Highest 2 Lowest and High and Low are reinterpretations of Ed McBain’s mystery novel, The King’s Ransom. The movie will be released in theaters August 22 and stream on Apple TV+ starting September 5 after world premiering later this month at the Cannes Film Festival.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

The BBC and BritBox International have chosen Endless Night as their latest Agatha Christie adaptation. Set in 1967, the book is neither a Poirot nor a Marple but follows man-of-many-trades Michael Rogers, who finds himself working as chauffeur for the enigmatic designer du jour Rudolf Santonix. Transfixed by Santonix’s latest project, a beautiful house in the English countryside, Mike dreams of meeting the love of his life and taking up residence. But unbeknownst to Mike, the house that he has set his heart on has a dark past that goes back for centuries. The show is the latest in a long succession of Christie adaptations on the BBC and BritBox from Sarah Phelps and ITV Studios-owned Mammoth Screen, with the latest being Towards Zero starring Anjelica Huston.

Harlan Coben, whose books including Missing You and Fool Me Once have been turned into Netflix crime dramas, is expanding into the world of true-crime. CBS has ordered Harlan Coben’s Final Twist, an unscripted series, as part of its 2025/26 season, with Coben hosting the hour-long program. The network said he will "guide audiences through gripping tales of murder, high-profile crimes and life-altering surprises, each meticulously unraveled to reveal hidden truths, deceptions and lies," with each episode featuring exclusive interviews and never-before-seen archival materials surrounding certain cases.

Apple TV+ has greenlit The Wanted Man, an eight-episode thriller drama starring Hugh Laurie (House; The Night Manager). The Wanted Man centers on Felix Carmichael (Laurie), the head of a London crime syndicate called The Capital. The previously untouchable Felix is finally captured, but while being held in prison, he discovers that he was betrayed by someone close to him. As the traitor moves to dismantle his empire, Felix risks a daring escape in order to exact revenge, making him a wanted man once more. Thandiwe Newton (Westworld), Fionn Whitehead (Dunkirk), Gina McKee (My Policeman), Hazel Doupe (Say Nothing), Elliott Heffernan (Blitz), and Stephen Dillane (Game of Thrones) also star in the series, created, written, and executive produced by Hijack co-creator George Kay.

CBS has ordered the Yellowstone sequel, Y: Marshals (working title), for its midseason lineup. The new drama will feature Luke Grimes reprising his role as Kayce Dutton, who joins an elite unit of U.S. Marshals. The official logline has Kayce "combining his skills as a cowboy and Navy SEAL to bring range justice to Montana, where he and his teammates must balance family, duty and the high psychological cost that comes with serving as the last line of defense in the region’s war on violence."

The 100 actor Sachin Sahel and Brady Roberts, co-creator of the Escaping Denver podcast, have teamed to develop a heist television series. Sideshow (working title) will see a young street performer recruited into a traveling sideshow, only to discover its circus performers use their unique skill sets to commit high-stakes heists. Sahel is writing the pilot based on an idea he developed with Brady, with casting and network attachments in coming months.

NBC has renewed Chicago Fire for a 14th season, Chicago P.D. for a 13th season, and Chicago Med for an 11th season. As with the recently renewed Law & Order (coming back for a 25th season) and Law & Order: SVU (back for a record 27th season), there will be some cost cutting, although most of the major stars, including SVU's Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T, will return. However, Juliana Martinez and Octavio Pisano will not be returning to SVU as series regulars. The network also reduced the "minimum guarantees" for most cast members across the Chicago and Law & Order series, meaning that regulars may not appear in every produced episode. The overall episode number may also be reduced with slightly shorter seasons.

NBC also took the axe to other series, including Found, canceled after two seasons, which starred Shanola Hampton as public relations specialist Gabi Mosely, who was once herself one of the more than 300,000 missing people of color in the U.S., and her crisis management team who now make sure there is always someone looking out for the forgotten missing people; Suits LA (after one season), a spinoff of the long-running USA Network series Suits, which centered on Ted Black (Stephen Amell), a former federal prosecutor from New York who has reinvented himself by representing the most powerful clients in Los Angeles; and The Irrational (after two seasons), based on Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational, and starring former Law & Order alum Jesse L. Martin as world-renowned professor of behavioral science, Alec Mercer, as he lends his unique expertise to an array of high-stakes cases involving governments, law enforcement, and corporations.

Apple's Cape Fear series has three new additions: Anna Baryshnikov (Love Lies Bleeding), Jamie Hector (Bosch), and Clara Wong (Billions), who join Javier Bardem, Amy Adams, Patrick Wilson, and CCH Pounder in the cast. Created, written, and showrun by Nick Antosca, the story follows happily married attorneys Anna Bowden (Adams) and Tom Bowden (Wilson) who find themselves at the center of a storm when Max Cady (Bardem), a notorious killer from their past, gets out of prison. The 10-episode series is a tense, Hitchcockian thriller and an examination of America’s obsession with true crime in the 21st century, and is based on both John D. MacDonald's novel, The Executioners, which inspired Gregory Peck’s 1962 film for Universal, as well as the acclaimed 1991 remake directed by Martin Scorsese, who is among the executive producers here.

PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

Winston Duke will lead Kingsland, the fifth drama series that Kevin Hart and Charlamagne Tha God's audio production company has made with Audible. Duke (Black Panther; Us) will play seasoned investigator Jamison Wright in the thriller, alongside Yara Martinez, who plays Roxanne Wright. Also starring are Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Jason George, Joe Morton, and Jabari Banks. Per the synopsis, the story follows a fictional sovereign Black nation located just seven miles off the coast of Georgia. Funded by a landmark U.S. Reparations Act and founded as a haven for African Americans, Kingsland has, in just a decade, become one of the wealthiest and most exclusive countries in the world. As the nation prepares to mark its tenth anniversary, it is suddenly rattled by a series of brutal lynchings, shattering its image of perfection and igniting a high-stakes manhunt for a serial killer. Wright plays an investigator assigned to the case, who has to navigate the island’s elite political circles, long-buried secrets, and the growing unrest that could unravel the country’s carefully constructed identity.

NPR's Book of the Day featured the new novel, Fair Play by Louise Hegarty, a self-aware take on the golden age of detective fiction.

On NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, Ayesha Rascoe spoke with first-time author Liann Zhang about Julie Chan Is Dead, a thriller that satirizes influencers.