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

Narcos series director and Good Girls filmmaker Alejandra Márquez Abella is set to helm an untitled Mennonite crime thriller for Amazon MGM Studios based on Steve Fisher’s Los Angeles Times article, "How a Mennonite Farmer Became a Drug Suspect." The article follows a Mennonite farmer who makes a deal with the Sinaloa Cartel to use his land as an airstrip to traffic cocaine after his wife becomes sick. This leads to him being excommunicated from his community while simultaneously becoming feared by the cartels for his ruthless business dealings. Márquez Abella and Manuel Alcala will write the script.

Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. has joined the cast of the thriller, Atlas King, written and directed by Nika Agiashvili (Daughter Of The Wolf). Gooding Jr. joins the previously announced Michael Bisping, George Finn, Sarah Wayne Callies, and Anne Winters. Atlas King follows a hardened ex-fighter, played by former MMA fighter Bisping, who returns from exile to bury his best friend and confront old rivalries. Reuniting with his godson (Finn), a streetwise enforcer entangled with a powerful crime syndicate, the two hatch a high-stakes heist in a desperate bid to escape the grip of a ruthless mob boss (Gooding Jr.).

Adria Arjona (Hit Man) has signed on as co-lead opposite Michael B. Jordan in Amazon MGM Studios' Jordan-directed reimagining of The Thomas Crown Affair. Arjona takes over the role from Taylor Russell, who exited the project last week due to creative differences, with production underway in London. The actress is set for the role of an insurance investigator who comes to suspect that an adventurous banking executive is pulling off ambitious heists, and develops a spark with him. It’s a version of the role played by Faye Dunaway opposite Steve McQueen in the original 1968 film, and by Rene Russo opposite Pierce Brosnan in the 1999 version. Others in the cast of the new Thomas Crown Affair include Kenneth Branagh, Lily Gladstone, Danai Gurira, Pilou Asbaek, and Aiysha Hart.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Golden Age authors Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers (the Lord Peter Wimsey series), and G.K. Chesterton (the Father Brown series) are to be brought to life in a TV series titled The Detection Club from the BBC and BritBox International. Produced by BBC Studios Drama Productions, the show is understood to be taking a "mystery-of-the-week" style approach with fictional versions of Christie, Sayers, and Chesterton set as the main characters solving crimes each episode. Formed nearly 100 years ago, the elusive and exclusive Detection Club met regularly as its members dined and helped each other with technical aspects of their writing. As well as meeting, they also adhered to Knox’s Commandments, which instructed that a reader of their books must always be given a fair chance at guessing the guilty party. Casting is said to be underway.

Apple TV+ will premiere its upcoming limited thriller series The Savant on Friday, September 26, with the release of two episodes.The drama follows an undercover investigator known as "The Savant" (Jessica Chastain), who infiltrates online hate groups to stop domestic extremists before they act. The 8-episode TV series is inspired by the true story published by Cosmopolitan in 2019, written by Andrea Stanley. The story titled "Is It Possible to Stop a Mass Shooting Before It Happens?" profiles a woman who the interviewer calls "K," a former police officer and Marine who helps the FBI keep track of dangerous men online who are potential threats to national security.

Paramount+ has opted not to proceed with a second season of Robert and Michelle King’s crime drama series, Happy Face, starring Annaleigh Ashford and Dennis Quaid. The drama was inspired by the true-life story of Melissa Moore, the Happy Face podcast from iHeartPodcasts and Moore, and the autobiography Shattered Silence, written by Moore with M. Bridget Cook. Jumping off from Moore’s true-life story, Happy Face follows Melissa (Ashford) and her incarcerated father, known as the Happy Face Killer (Quaid). After decades of no contact, he finally finds a way to force himself back into his daughter’s life. In a race against the clock, Melissa must find out if an innocent man is going to be put to death for a crime her father committed. Throughout, she discovers the impact her father had on his victims’ families and must face a reckoning of her own identity. James Wolk, Tamera Tomakili, Khiyla Aynne, and Benjamin Mackey also starred in Season 1, whose finale provided a satisfying ending to the case but also left it open-ended for a potential second season with the characters.

Channel 5 in the UK has commissioned several new crime dramas for the 2025-2026 TV season: an adaptation of the best-selling Cooper & Fry mystery novels from Stephen Booth with Downton Abbey's Robert James-Collier as Cooper and Doctor Who's Mandip Gill as Fry; Number One Fan, about a Daytime Talk Show host named Lucy who is rescued from an attack by "her number one fan," a woman with ulterior motives that link her to the scandalous secret Lucy has spent her life trying to keep hidden; Death in Benidorm, featuring a pair of odd couple crime solvers, retired detective Dennis Crown and barmaid Rosa, who live in a seaside paradise; Missed Call, about a mother who receives a worrying late-night missed call from her daughter on an exchange program in France and races to find her when she goes missing; Imposter, starring Jackie Woodburne and Kym Marsh in a murder mystery set in Australia; and the gripping, psychological drama, The Family Secret.

PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

On Crime Time FM, Simon McCleave chatted with Paul Burke about his new novels, The Abersock Killings and Five Days in Provence; Anglesey and Snowdonia; and writing TV.

Debbi Mack's latest guest on the Crime Cafe was clinical psychotherapist and crime writer Harper Kincaid, discussing her Bookbinder Mystery series.