THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES
Lou Diamond Phillips (Young Guns) is set to direct and appear in the legal thriller, The Ambulance Chaser, based on the novel by Brian Cuban, brother of Mark Cuban. The story follows Atlanta attorney Jason Fredricks, a successful but morally conflicted lawyer whose life unravels when human skeletal remains tied to his past resurface. Quickly identified as a "person of interest" tied to a decades-old murder, Fredricks must navigate among the detectives determined to nail him, his District Attorney ex-wife, and his law practice that feeds off of "injured" clients, all while desperately trying to clear his name, protect his son, and expose a web of corruption and betrayal. The project is envisioned as the first installment in a trilogy.
Emmy winner Jason Bateman (Ozark) will be making his third feature as a director with Universal‘s adaptation of John Grisham‘s The Partner. The film stars Tom Holland as Patrick Lanigan, a young partner in a Biloxi law firm who fakes his own death in a burning car. He leaves behind a wife, newborn daughter, and a secret. What he’s actually done is create a template for a new life by stealing $90 million from a client of his crooked law firm and find happiness and love in South America. When the client who worked so hard to defraud the government finds the money is missing from his offshore accounts, he becomes determined to hunt down the lawyer he doesn’t believe is dead. That leads the attorney to have to turn himself in to the FBI and face up to the wife, child, and life he left behind.
Filmmaker Duane Edwards’s independent thriller, Laura Louise, has lined up its cast including Corbin Bernsen (LA Law), Denise Sanchez (Bosch: Legacy), Gilbert Owuor (Emancipation), Patrick Mulvey (The Girlfriend Experience), Kristen Bush (Paterno) and Campbell Krausen (Ghostlight). The project follows Edward Brannock (Bernsen), a retired postal worker thrust into the center of a reopened missing person’s case. As new evidence surfaces decades after a teenage girl’s disappearance, Brannock faces mounting scrutiny and must confront long-buried family secrets he’s desperate to keep hidden. The film is based on an original screenplay by Frederick Mensch (HBO’s Nightingale), who previously collaborated with Edwards on the 2024 feature drama, Wrong Numbers, starring Emily Hall and David Kelsey.
Black Bear has acquired the U.S. rights to Tuner and will release the film theatrically in 2026. Tuner is the feature directing film debut of Oscar-winning writer Daniel Roher (Nalvany) that stars Leo Woodall, Dustin Hoffman, Havana Rose Liu, and Lior Raz. Woodall plays a former piano prodigy turned piano tuner apprentice who is down on his luck. Using his excellent auditory skills to help out his found family (Hoffman) in a time of dire need, while finding love and inspiration in unexpected places with a composer (Liu), he’s forced to make tough decisions as he gets involved in the unsavory business of cracking safes. The romantic thriller premiered at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals and will mark the company’s second theatrical release.
Filming has wrapped in Wales, UK, on Gareth Evans's new feature, A Colt Is My Passport, the Amazon MGM Studios/Orion Pictures reimagining of Nikkatsu’s 1960s Yakuza hitman thriller. Sope Dirisu (Gangs of London). will take on the lead role, with supporting casting including Oscar nominee Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction), Jack Reynor (Midsommar), Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody), Victor Alli, (Bridgerton) Ewan Mitchell (The Last Kingdom), Burn Gorman (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), and Noah Taylor (Edge Of Tomorrow). The update of the hardboileded noir original will be set in 1978 Detroit and tell the story of Colt, a Vietnam veteran turned contract killer, who goes on the run after assassinating a gangland boss.
Academy Award winner Mel Gibson and Renata Notni (Zorro) have inked deals to join Esai Morales in Coyote, the border thriller from filmmaker Per Prinz. The project follows Hernán Barroca (Morales), a weathered ex-smuggler pulled back into the dangerous world he thought he had left behind. When Hernán helps Julia and her young daughter, Maribel, navigate treacherous borderlands, their desperate journey triggers the wrath of a ruthless trafficking syndicate. As the past and present collide—with U.S. Border Patrol agent Bradley joining the pursuit—Hernán must rely on his cunning and grit to survive and find redemption. Gibson plays Jack Bradley, a weathered U.S. Army Sergeant and father of Border Patrol agent Liz Bradley. Notni portrays Julia, a mother fighting to get her daughter to safety, as she ventures through the borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico.
TELEVISION/STREAMING
Amazon Prime has ordered a four-part series based upon Murder in the Dark, the first of influential Danish literary icon Dan Turèll’s "Murder Series" of crime novels. Murder in the Dark follows a retired and hard-bitten "nameless journalist" and his daughter Sophie, who is an ambitious police detective. The pair are forced work together to solve a series of mysterious murders. Specifically, their alliance begins after a prominent lawyer is brutally killed, shortly after agreeing to reveal secrets from his criminal past in a tell-all book the journalist was going to write. Turèll’s books inspired 1986 movie Murder In The Dark with musician and actor Michael Falch playing the lead, a role he will reprise in the new series. The cast also includes Alex Høgh Andersen (Vikings), Katinka Lærke Petersen (Elsker dig for tiden), Sofie Torp (Carmen Curlers), Lisbeth Wulff (Borgen), Kristian Halken (Rom), Alexandre Willaume (Tomb Raider), Clint Ruben (Graverne), and Benedikte Hansen (Badehotellet).
Patrick Macmanus, the man behind series including Peacock’s Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy and Dr. Death, has another true-crime story in the works. Macmanus is adapting the Vigilante podcast as a scripted series for the NBCUniversal streamer. The series follows Tim Miller, a famous search-and-rescuer in Dickinson, Texas, who’s helped track down hundreds of missing persons. After 38 years of searching, he’s now convinced that he’s finally solved his own daughter’s murder. The story explores a father’s obsessive pursuit of justice for his missing daughter, highlighting the devastating impact of loss and raising questions about the boundaries between justice and vigilantism.
Iceland’s production powerhouse Glassriver has inked a major international distribution deal with Mediawan Rights for the crime thriller series, Elma, based on Eva Björg Ægisdóttir’s best-selling books. When a body of a woman is discovered at a lighthouse in the Icelandic town of Akranes, it soon becomes clear that she's no stranger to the area. Chief Investigating Officer Elma, who has returned to Akranes following a personal trauma, and her colleagues Sævar and Hörður, commence an uneasy investigation, which uncovers a shocking secret in the dead woman's past that continues to reverberate in the present day. But as Elma and her team make a series of discoveries, they bring to light a host of long-hidden crimes that shake the entire community. Sifting through the rubble of the townspeople's shattered memories, they have to dodge increasingly serious threats, and find justice … before it's too late.
Netflix and the BBC announced a two-season Peaky Blinders sequel series. The 12-episode spinoff will stay in 1950s Birmingham, picking up after the original show’s six-season run and the events of the upcoming follow-up film. After being heavily bombed in World War II, Birmingham is building a better future out of concrete and steel. The race in on to own Birmingham’s massive reconstruction project, which becomes a brutal contest of mythical dimensions. Original star and Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) will serve as one of the executive producers.
PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO
On NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, host Scott Simon spoke with Janice Hallett about her new novel, The Killer Question, a tale of a trivia night that turns deadly.
The New York Times chatted with British mystery writer Richard Osman, author of the Thursday Murder Club series about why seniors make ideal fictional detectives and how a "cozy" murder mystery is the perfect frame to explore growing old.
David Jarvis chatted with Paul Burke on Crime Time FM about his new spy thriller, The Green Feathers; Five Eyes; Mike Kingdom; the zeitgeist; and the lighter touch.
The latest episode of Meet the Thriller Author featured author Nicole Trope, whose novels have gripped readers around the world with their mix of raw emotion and edge-of-your-seat suspense, to discuss her latest book, My Daughter’s Secret.
Debbi Mack's latest guest on the Crime Cafe podcast was author Desmond P. Ryan. a former police detective with the Toronto Police who draws on his experiences to write two very distinctive series, the Mike O’Shea series of gritty police stories, reminiscent of Joseph Wambaugh, and a series called "A Pint of Trouble," which is closer in tone to the Thursday Murder Club books by Richard Osman.
On the Tipping My Fedora podcast (which just celebrated its one-year-anniversary), host Sergio Angelini welcomed Professor Stacey Abbott, co-author of TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen, to discuss the John Wick series starring Keanu Reeves.
The latest episode of the Cops and Writers Podcast welcomed Brian Brady, a retired Chief of Police and corporate security executive, who has published three crime novels, including his latest, Greed.
Read or Dead hosts Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed books on the cozier end of the mystery spectrum that also feature cute animals.
Want to know what cocaine has to do with residency hours? What genetic disease can kill you in the operating room? How a missed diagnosis resulted in changes to the training of every American intern and resident afterward? The Pick Your Poison podcast investigated.
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