THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES
Patrick Schwarzenegger has joined the S. Craig Zahler movie, The Bookie & The Bruiser, in which he will star in a dual role opposite Vince Vaughn and Theo James. The film is set in 1959 New York City and features a pensive Jewish fellow named Rivner (James) and an oversized Italian-American tough named Boscolo (Vaughn). Having served in World War II, the two return as changed men, no longer fitting into their old lives. Unwilling to take orders or play by the rules of polite society, the two partner up as a bookmaker and his enforcer and run an illicit gambling operation that proves highly profitable — but dangerous. Their operation thrives until they’re caught in a violent power struggle between the Mafia and an Irish gang, forcing them into a violent fight for survival. Schwarzenegger will play twin brothers Augie (a down-on-his-luck gambler) and Bernard (a family man upended by his brother’s deception).
Stephen Dorff (True Detective) and Kevin Dillon (Entourage) are set to star in Red Stick Hoods, a Southern crime thriller set in Baton Rouge’s neon-lit underworld. Red Stick Hoods follows a seasoned criminal and his volatile young partner as a routine job spirals into a violent chain reaction neither can control. Lance Kawas (Good Thief) will direct and produce, with production getting underway this fall. The film marks the first original screenplay by crime novelist Victor Gischler (Fast Charlie).
Damian Lewis has joined Ella Purnell (Fallout) and Nicholas Galitzine (The Idea of You) in The Return of Stanley Atwell. Written and directed by Brian Welsh (Beats), the project is based on a story by Steven Soderbergh, who also serves as exec producer, and follows Stanley Atwell (Galitzine), the presumed dead son and heir to Lord Atwell’s title and fortune, who unexpectedly returns to the family estate, having escaped a decade of mysterious captivity. His shocking reappearance causes chaos as he finds his sister Beatrice fighting to claim his inheritance, while close friend Pamela (Purnell) manipulates his puzzling return and a dark family secret in a bid to seize control of the Atwell fortune.
Gerard Butler is set to star in the action-thriller, The Next, playing a sniper who receives an anonymous threat over the radio and must race against a ticking clock in order to save his family and 70,000 fans at the biggest sporting event on the globe – the World Cup. From a script by Aaron Benjamin and based on "real-life operatives," the film is due to begin production in early 2027.
TELEVISION/STREAMING
Apple TV has greenlit Disavowed, an action thriller series starring and executive produced by James Marsden (Paradise). In the series, Marsden will play legendary CIA Case Officer Brad Griffin, who is abruptly fired in the middle of a global hunt for an elusive assassin responsible for killing his colleague. Disgraced and outcast from the world of intelligence, all bets are off when Brad decides to go after the 15 million dollar federal bounty on the assassin’s head.
Netflix announced the upcoming fourth season of Netflix‘s spy thriller, The Night Agent, will be the series’ last. Gabriel Basso will return as agent Peter Sutherland. In Season 3, agent Peter Sutherland (Basso) was called in to track down a young Treasury Agent who fled to Istanbul with sensitive government intel after killing his boss. This kicked off a sequence of events where Peter investigated a dark money network while avoiding its paid assassins. As previously announced, the drama has lined up more big-name series regular cast additions opposite Basso for its fourth and final season, including Bosch star Titus Welliver as a special DOJ prosecutor, Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight) as Peter’s new partner Dom, Li Jun Li (Sinners) as Dom’s wife, and Elizabeth Lail (You) as Peter’s ex-fiancée Zoe.
Jenna Elfman is set to play Stephen Fry’s boss and handler in the Fox drama series, The Interrogator. Elfman, who recently starred in three seasons of AMC’s Dark Winds, is the latest star to join the series, which was handed a 12-episode straight-to-series order for the 2026-27 season earlier this year. She joins the likes of Luke Kleintank and Michael Beach as a series regular in the show, which stars British comedian Fry as former MI6 agent Conrad Henry. When conventional methods have failed, Henry’s quirky charm, superior intellect, and mind-bending behavioral maneuvers make him the only man able to lockpick the minds of the world’s most dangerous criminals.
John Patrick Jordan (The Accountant 2) has joined the cast of AMC's Dark Winds for Season 5 in a key recurring role. Based on the Leaphorn & Chee book series by Tony Hillerman, Dark Winds is set in 1971 on a remote outpost of the Navajo Nation near Monument Valley and follows Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) of the Tribal Police. Season 4 focuses on the search for a missing Navajo girl, which takes Leaphorn, Chee, and Manuelito (Jessica Matten) from the safety of the Navajo Nation to the gritty terrain of 1970s Los Angeles in a race against the clock to save her from an obsessive killer with ties to organized crime. Details regarding the plot of Season 5 are currently under wraps, but Jordan will play Dale Hicks, an FBI agent newly stationed at the Sheriff’s department, alongside Leaphorn and Alvarado (Paola Núñez), who quickly gets wind of interference amongst his department’s investigations.
Prime Video's Scarpetta has assembled the new cast additions for Season 2, which started production last month in Nashville. David Arquette (The Mess We Made), Jodi Balfour (For All Mankind), William Zabka (Cobra Kai), Stella Baker (The Republic of Sarah), Kim Dickens (Deadwood), Troy Garity (Barbershop), Jerod Haynes (The Greatest), Michael “Killer Mike” Render (The Lowdown) and Holland Taylor (The Morning Show) are set to recur in the new installment of the forensic crime thriller. They join returning main cast members Nicole Kidman, who stars as Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, and Jamie Lee Curtis, who stars as her sister Dorothy Farinelli, Bobby Cannavale as Detective Pete Marino, Simon Baker as FBI profiler Benton Wesley, and Ariana DeBose as Kay’s tech-savvy niece Lucy Farinelli Watson.
ABC's High Potential has found a new showrunner, or showrunners, in the form of Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, who ran the breakout first season of Poker Face. They are replacing Todd Harthan, who stepped down in March after serving as showrunner for the first two seasons. Kaitlin Olson returns to star in the hit crime drama, playing Morgan Gillory, an intellectually gifted cleaning woman who becomes a police consultant.
It came down to the wire, but Law & Order has been handed a Season 26 renewal for 2026-27. The mothership Law & Order, which has spawned several spinoffs, has a star-heavy cast but has kept its size relatively small, with six series regulars this season, Tony Goldwyn, Hugh Dancy, Maura Tierney, Reid Scott, Odelya Halevi and David Ajala. Season 26 will apparently not be designated as final, although details are still being worked out regarding any potential budget cuts and other specifics.
Fox has given a Season 3 renewal for Murder in a Small Town. In the new 10-episode installment, returning leads Rossif Sutherland and Kristin Kreuk are being joined by Peter Gallagher (The O.C.) who has been tapped as a series regular. Based on the nine-book series by L.R. Wright, Murder In a Small Town follows Karl Alberg (Sutherland), who moves to a quiet, coastal town to soothe a psyche that has been battered by big-city police work and starts a relationship with the local librarian Cassandra (Kreuk). In a season-long arc, Gallagher will play Rod Finlayson, a charismatic, uber-independent, capable yet unreliable figure, whose arrival at the Gibsons’ marina on his beloved boat sets up a sequence of upheavals that Alberg and Cassandra will have to grapple with.
The broadcast networks and streaming services will be holding their "upfronts" today through Wednesday, too late for this blog post. Upfronts are usually where broadcasters reveal their lineups for the upcoming season to lure in advertisers. That being said, some scheduling news has already been announced, including over at NBC, which picked up four of its pilots to series, including the reboot of classic 1970s private eye drama, The Rockford Files, which will star David Boreanaz; Line of Fire, starring Peter Krause as part of a family of law enforcement agents; and Sunset P.I., which is a comedy, not a drama, about a group of Los Angeles-based private investigators. Sadly, another pilot that is not going forward is Key Witness, which would have featured Boreanaz's former Bones co-star Emily Deschanel as a criminal profiler working with the FBI, and the network also bailed on Puzzled, which was based on the “Puzzle Master” books by Danielle Trussoni.
PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO
Write Place, Wrong Crime interviewed Brian Brady about his long career in law enforcement and his Golden Gate mystery novels.
House of Mystery chatted with Royce Wilson about his law enforcement forensics experience and Riley Scott Novels.
On Crime Time FM, Victoria Selman spoke with Jack Butler, publishing director at Sphere Little Brown and Barbara Powell, founder of One Word Literary.
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