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

Idris Elba will reprise his role as Detective John Luther in a film follow-up to 2023’s Luther: The Fallen Sun for Netflix. Dermot Crowley will also return alongside Elba in the sequel, playing DSU Martin Schenk, as will Ruth Wilson, playing Alice Morgan. The television show launched in 2010 to run for five seasons, centering on Elba’s titular detective. Wilson’s Morgan started out as a research doctor hiding her murderous plans, but she worked with Luther in three of the five installments. Crowley’s Schenk also started out as an office antagonist for Luther, but the pair worked out an arrangement where Crowley could help from within the police force. The Fallen Sun also starred Cynthia Erivo as Odette Raine and Andy Serkis as David Robey, and featured the now-disgraced detective breaking out of prison to hunt down a serial killer wreaking havoc in London.


Vertical has acquired the psychological thriller, Stone Creek Killer, by director Robert Enriquez (Cash for Gold), starring Clayne Crawford (Lethal Weapon) and Lyndon Smith (National Treasure: Edge of History). The movie, which was set and filmed in Minnesota, follows a small-town police chief (Crawford) who pursues a serial killer, helped by a psychic's (Smith) visions, while fighting to prove his own innocence. The ensemble cast includes Britney Young (Glow), Vincent Washington (Young King), Andrew J. West (The Walking Dead), and Adam Hicks (Zeke and Luther). Vertical will give the film a limited theatrical and on-demand release in the U.S. on November 28.


Ed Helms  (The Hangover franchise) is set to star in and produce The English Tutor, a spy thriller from director Gaz Alazraki (Father of the Bride), to be financed and produced by the Madrid-based Zeta Studios. Michael LeSieur (I Work at Macy’s) wrote the film, described as a character-driven espionage thriller set in Mexico City. Further details as to the plot are under wraps, but the film will shoot next year — principally in Mexico City, with additional photography in Spain.


Magnolia Pictures has acquired all North American rights for the Nordic thriller, Operation Napoleon – Tears Of The Wolf, which is currently shooting in Finland, Iceland, and Germany. The movie is a sequel to the international hit Operation Napoleon, adapted from Arnaldur Indridason’s eponymous bestseller, which starred Vivian Ólafsdóttir as Kristin, a young lawyer who is inadvertently caught up in a plot to cover up a World War II secret. The new English-language adventure reunites Ólafsdóttir (It Hatched) with Jack Fox (Riviera), and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Severance, True Detective), under the direction of Jyri Kähönen (Trackers, Bordertown). The intrigue follows Kristin and her team on a high-stakes hunt for the legendary “Tears of the Wolf”— a cache of Nazi diamonds hidden during WWII. After witnessing a murder, Kristin uncovers clues that lead to encrypted codes and lost musical notes, propelling the trio across Iceland, Finland, and Germany toward a dramatic showdown in Helsinki’s underground bunkers and the Finnish Archipelago.


Colin Farrell will star in the action-thriller film Ordained, based on the upcoming comic book from publisher Bad Idea. He will star as Father Roy Craig, who performs last rites on a mob boss. The mob boss survives, and having confessed his crimes to the father, puts gangsters, hitmen, and corrupt cops on his trail to silence him for his knowledge. Father Roy has a violent past that prepares him for the onslaught, though he adheres to the sixth commandment, “Thou shall not kill.” John Wick writer Derek Kolstad penned the script and will produce along with Bad Idea’s Dinesh Shamdasani and Benjamin Simpson.


Almost three decades after they graced screens with the wild action feature, Face/Off, movie legends John Woo and Nicolas Cage are teaming up again on the crime biopic, Gambino, about notorious New York crime kingpin Carlo Gambino. The movie will follow Oscar winner Cage’s Carlo Gambino, a butcher’s son from Sicily, who rules New York’s underworld with quiet authority. But when his death sends shockwaves through the city, Pulitzer-winning journalist Jimmy Breslin follows the trail he left behind to uncover the man beneath the legend. Through the voices of those who loved him and those who feared him, Breslin peels back the composure that masked Gambino’s ruthlessness, revealing how this outsider rose to redefine power, loyalty, and the American dream.


TELEVISION/STREAMING

Cheo Hodari Coker, the creator of Netflix’s Marvel series, Luke Cage, is adapting Ace Atkins’s novel, Don’t Let The Devil Ride, for Tomorrow Studios. The thriller tells the story of Addison McKellar, who thought she knew the man she married – charming, successful Dean McKellar – until he vanished. Fearing the worst, she hires private investigator Porter Hayes, an old friend of her father’s and a legend in Memphis. As Hayes starts pulling at loose threads, Addison’s entire life unravels. Her easy, affluent lifestyle is funded by blood money from Dean’s shadowy international mercenary firm – and she doesn’t even know his real name. 


Stana Katic is set to star in Entangled, a drama project created by Will Pascoe, who served as executive producer and showrunner on Season 3 of the Prime Video/AXN thriller drama, Absentia, that also starred Katic. Entangled is inspired by the story of real-life CIA intelligence officers Meredith and Freddie Woodruff, one of the Agency’s first undercover husband-and-wife teams, who conducted their overseas covert operations while also raising a family. Working across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, they tracked down international terrorists, recruited and handled spies, and survived a sudden and violent coup in one of the countries they were stationed in. The TV series follows married couple Abby (Katic) and Jim Sullivan, deep-cover CIA officers who must juggle their responsibilities as spies and parents while stationed overseas in one of the world’s most dangerous countries.


Station 19 star Jaina Lee Ortiz is returning to ABC as a series regular on the network’s upcoming hourlong series, RJ Decker, headlined by Scott Speedman. The project, from Elementary creator Rob Doherty and based on the 1987 novel Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen, is slated to premiere in midseason. The drama centers on the eponymous RJ Decker (Speedman), a disgraced newspaper photographer and ex-con who starts over as a private investigator in the colorful-if-crime-filled world of South Florida. The series follows him as he tackles cases that range from slightly odd to outright bizarre with the help of his journalist ex, her police detective wife, and a shadowy new benefactor, a woman from his past who could be his greatest ally… or his one-way ticket back to prison. Ortiz will play Emi Ochoa, the shrewd-if-unpredictable daughter of a very powerful, very corrupt state senator with ties to RJ’s past. In addition to Speedman and Ortiz, the series regular cast includes Kevin Rankin as Aloysius "Wish" Aiken, Adelaide Clemens as Catherine Delacroix, and Bevin Bru as Melody "Mel" Romero.


Peacock has decided not to renew Poker Face for a third season, but that may not signal an end to the series. Creator Rian Johnson is shopping the show to other broadcasters for a two-season commitment, with a twist:  Peter Dinklage will take over the role of Charlie (played originally by Natasha Lyonne), the sleuth whose superpower is an innate ability to detect liars. Poker Face was designed as a Columbo-like murder mystery of the week, with Lyonne playing a former casino employer whose value for being able to call bullshit got overshadowed by witnessing a crime and needing to go on the lam from a casino boss. Traveling the country in her 1969 Plymouth Barracuda, Charlie puts her superpower to use solving homicides everywhere she stops, while she stays on the run. Poker Face finished Season Two as one of Peacock’s most-watched series, but the show is expensive, and the ratings were down a bit from a first season, which was filled with critical raves and Emmy nominations. In the long term, Johnson’s hope is for the franchise to evolve with a new actor to play the lead character every two years.


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

Debbi Mack's latest guest on the Crime Cafe podcast was award-winning crime writer, Victoria Selman, author of five thrillers, including her popular Ziba MacKenzie series.


Wrong Place, Write Crime host, Frank Zafiro, spoke with Michael A. Black about his years as a police officer from the Chicago area and his writing career penning various genres including mystery, thriller, sci-fi, western, horror, and sports.


In a special episode of Meet the Thriller Author, host Alan Petersen recorded the show live from the floor of Author Nation 2025 in Las Vegas, interviewing thriller author Daniel Pelfrey about the release of the first book in his brand-new Nathan Calloway Thriller Series


On Crime Time FM, Phoebe Morgan (with Simon & Schuster) and Jack Butler (with Little Brown) discussed the trends coming out of the Frankfurt Book Fair.


On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester recommended books for their annual holiday gift guide.