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

Maggie Gyllenhaal will be teaming up once again with Warner Bros. to adapt the Rachel Kushner novel, Creation Lake, with the filmmaker serving as writer, director, and producer. Creation Lake follows a spy who is hired to disrupt a farming collective in France run by environmental activists. But along the way, she begins to question not just her mission but her direction in life in a tale that is described as a philosophical thriller. Released in 2024, Creation Lake was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.


U.S. production outfit Storiesbound is gearing up to shoot the psychological thriller The Degrees Of Pain with Luna Fujimoto (The Shadow's Edge), Show Kasamatsu (Tokyo Vice), and Takehiro Hira (Shogun) joining the cast. Directed by Donie Ordiales, the project is scheduled to film entirely in Japan by cinematographer Takuro Ishizaka, whose credits include Hikari’s Rental Family, starring Brendan Fraser, which also recently filmed in Japan. The cast of The Degrees Of Pain also includes starring roles for Japanese actress Rila Fukushima and veteran actor-director Naoto Takenaka. The story follows an American writer who travels to Tokyo to be reunited with an actress he’s fallen in love with, only to become entangled with her powerful family and their gatekeepers.


Ryan McParland (Say Nothing), Alfie Allen (Game Of Thrones), Ben Hardy (The Conjuring: Last Rites), and Stacy Martin (The Brutalist) are joining Vincent Cassel and Felicity Jones in the Agatha Christie film Eleven Missing Days. Per the synopsis, "In December 1926, at the height of her fame, Agatha Christie became front-page news when she vanished in bizarre circumstances from her home. In a case of life imitating art, this whodunnit explores the investigation behind her disappearance, strangely resembling an Agatha Christie novel itself where everyone in her life became a suspect." Jones stars as Christie, and Cassel plays a retired Belgian police detective — in an echo of Christie’s most famous sleuth Hercule Poirot — who is drawn into the mysterious real-life case of the Brit author’s disappearance. Bertie Ellwood (Silo) is directing from a screenplay by Ernesto Foronda (Better Luck Tomorrow), based on the book, Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, by Christie scholar Jared Cade.


Miles Teller (Paper Tiger) has signed on to star in Copperhead, a new thriller from King Ivory helmer John Swab and Black Label Media. Written by Chad Feehan and J. Todd Scott, Copperhead‘s story is set into motion when an undercover drug deal explodes into violence in West Texas. A veteran detective is then forced to team with a young federal agent to unravel the conspiracy within their elite task force.  


TELEVISION/STREAMING

Netflix is developing Hit Man, a series inspired by the 2024 AGC Studios feature that was co-written, produced, and headlined by Glen Powell and co-written, directed and produced by Richard Linklater. Powell and Linklater will executive produce the potential series, which is written by You’re the Worst creator, Stephen Falk. Details about the series haven't been disclosed, but it will likely follow the general premise of the movie about an unassuming police contractor — in this case a college professor — who uses elaborate disguises and develops different characters to pose as a fake hitman and expose suspects looking to get someone killed. The premise is somewhat reminiscent of J.J. Abrams’ ABC spy drama Alias, whose protagonist assumed different identities.


Peacock has picked up The Break-In, a mystery based on the novel of the same title by Katherine Faulkner. The show comes from writer and executive producer Megan Gallagher and Carnival Films, who brought All Her Fault to life last year. The Break-In tells the story of Alice Rathbone, who is the victim of a home invasion. She refuses to accept that the tragic event was simply random and soon finds a trail of dark secrets that spiral closer to home than she ever could have imagined.


Hugh Laurie (House, The Night Manager) has landed a mystery role in his second John le Carré adaptation, the BBC and MGM+’s Legacy of Spies. The series is one of the BBC and MGM+’s biggest budget bets in recent years and is based on 1963’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the 2017 novel A Legacy of Spies, which itself is a prequel and sequel to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Laurie joins an ensemble cast including Matthew Macfadyen as legendary spymaster George Smiley, Dan Stevens as the enigmatic Bill Haydon, Felix Kammerer as Hans-Dieter Mundt, and Agnes O’Casey, who reprises her Spy Who Came In From The Cold West End role of Liz Gold. With a third season of Night Manager in the works, this puts Laurie in the rare position of starring in two separate adaptations of an author’s work that could land around the same time.

Hulu’s Only Murders In the Building will be heading to London for it upcoming sixth season, and has booked several English actors as guest stars, including two Doctor Whos, two Harry Potter stars and a Bridgerton standout. Joining Season 6 are David Tennant, Nicola Coughlan, Jodie Whittaker, Jim Broadbent, Richard Ayoade, Adrian Lukis, and Kathryn Hunter. They join recently announced recurring cast Jennifer Saunders, Sean Teale, Simone Ashley, Amar Chadha-Patel, Rhea Norwood, Matthew Beard, Sharon Horgan, Martin Freeman, Geri Halliwell-Horner, Jamie Demetriou, Anjana Vasan, Jane Horrocks, Derek Jacobi, and Lesley Nicol. This marks the first time the comedy mystery series has ventured outside of the U.S., as the crime-solving trio of Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) leaves New York City to investigate London’s newest mystery.


The fourth season of The Night Agent  will find Peter Sutherland and Rose Larkin together again. Luciane Buchanan, who played Peter’s (Gabriel Basso) charge-turned-partner and love interest, Rose, in the first two seasons of the Netflix action drama, will reprise her role in the series finale, although the extent of her presence is unclear. Fans were left disappointed when Buchanan, the female lead opposite Basso in Seasons 1 and 2 of The Night Agent, was not invited back for Season 3, though showrunner Shawn Ryan, who explained the decision with creative reasons, left the door open for her to return in future seasons.


Rupert Everett has signed on to star in the Australian crime drama, Fortitude Valley. The series will be a six-part crime thriller set in Brisbane that "explores family secrets, the corrupting force of power, and the complicated truths behind lies." Everett, recently seen in the Disney+ show Rivals, stars alongside Hunter Page-Lochard (Reckless) and Kat Stewart (Five Bedrooms).


Ryan Murphy's anticipated new series, The Shards, based on Bret Easton Ellis‘s prep school thriller novel, will premiere August 5 on FX and Hulu, as well as Disney+ internationally. The Shards is a dark coming-of-age tale with semi-autobiographical facets for Ellis. Per the official logline: Set against the vivid backdrop of 1980s Los Angeles, the series follows a group of privileged high school seniors at an elite prep school as they navigate identity, sex, jealousy, obsession, and the dangers lurking beneath the surface of American adolescence." Igby Rigney stars as Bret, an aspiring writer and keenly observant teenager whose reality begins to unravel with the arrival of a mysterious and magnetic new student, Robert Mallory (Homer Gere). Transferring in just before his senior year, Robert’s appearance coincides with the growing terror of The Trawler, a serial killer targeting teenagers across the city.  


The BBC has released a first-look trailer for the second season of Ludwig, the cozy crime series starring David Mitchell as a reclusive puzzle-setter-turned detective. Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin return to the drama, while Mark Bonnar (Guilt) and Sian Clifford (Fleabag) join the cast as series regulars. Also returning are Dylan Hughes as Henry Betts-Taylor, Dorothy Atkinson as DCS Carol Shaw, Ralph Ineson as Chief Constable Ziegler, and Karl Pilkington as DI Matt Neville. John Taylor (Mitchell) is a reclusive puzzle maker who publishes puzzle books under the pen name "Ludwig." His identical twin brother, James Taylor, is a successful detective chief inspector in the Cambridge police force. James has gone missing, and his wife Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin), a childhood friend of both brothers, enlists John's help to solve the mystery. Pretending to be his brother, John infiltrates the local police station to investigate; inadvertently, he becomes embroiled in solving other cases.


PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

Tim Shipman welcomed Brad Thor to Spybrary to discuss Choke Point, the 25th Scott Harvath thriller, and the evolution of Scott Harvath from post-9/11 counterterrorism operator.


In the latest Murder Junction episode, Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee chatted with spy fiction and SF writer David Goodman about his multi-award-winning novel, A Reluctant Spy, and its follow-up, Solitary Agents.

 
On the Outliers' Get to Know podcast, hosts DP Lyle and Kathleen Antrim were in conversation with bestselling Jonathan Santlofer, author of The Death Artist, Color Blind, The Killing Art, The Murder Notebook, and Anatomy of Fear.


House of Mystery Radio interviewed Caitlin Rother about Staged, in which investigative reporter Katrina Chopin returns to uncover the secret leaders of a deadly cabal, assisted by the insightful surfing detective, Ken Goode.


My Bookcase Slays welcomed former archaeology student and lifetime history buff, Connie Berry, as she digs into the backstory of her protagonist in the Kate Hamilton Mystery Series.


Bestselling author Robert Bailey stopped by Authors on the Air to discuss his twisty new legal thriller, The Mediator.


On the Pick Your Poison podcast, Dr. Jen Prosser investigated a toxin that has been killing workers since Paleolithic times—and is hiding in modern kitchens. The ancient Romans called it a widow-maker…because husbands died so quickly, some women had as many as seven.