Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and the post-hurricane edition of the weekly crime drama roundup:

MOVIES

Lionsgate’s Codeblack Films has acquired producer/director/writer Deon Taylor’s thriller Traffik, with a release date set for April 27, 2018. Traffik stars Paula Patton and Omar Epps as a young couple who travels on a romantic getaway to the mountains only to be terrorized by a vicious group of sex traffickers with whom they become locked in a desperate struggle for survival. The film’s cast also includes Laz Alonso, Roselyn Sanchez, Luke Goss, Missi Pyle, and William Fichtner.

The thriller Three Seconds has been picked up by Aviron Pictures. Adapted from a best-selling Swedish novel by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström, the film follows special ops soldier Pete Hoffman, who has been working undercover for crooked FBI handlers to infiltrate the Polish mob’s drug trade in New York until his cover is threatened when he has to return to prison after a drug deal goes wrong.

Universal Pictures and Working Title Films have released the international trailer for The Snowman based on Jo Nesbø’s global bestseller and starring Michael Fassbender (X-Men series), Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation) and Charlotte Gainsbourg (Independence Day: Resurgence).

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

CBS has put in development L.A. Confidential, a drama based on James Ellroy’s noir classic novel and spearheaded by Arnon Milchan, who produced the acclaimed 1997 movie adaptation of the book. L.A. Confidential follows three homicide detectives, a female reporter, and a Hollywood actress whose paths intersect as the detectives pursue a sadistic serial killer through the seedy underbelly of glamorous 1950s Los Angeles.

Netflix has ordered an adaptation of the thriller novel Quicksand as its first Swedish original series, which is from the head writer of The Bridge, Camilla Ahlgren. The project is based on the best-selling novel by Malin Persson Giolito about a mass shooting at a prep school in Stockholm’s wealthiest suburb, after which high-school student Maja Norberg finds herself on trial for murder. When the events of the day are revealed, so too are the private details about her relationship with Sebastian Fagerman and his dysfunctional family.

In competitive bid, Netflix has landed Ratched, a drama series from Ryan Murphy and Michael Douglas starring Sarah Paulson as a younger version of the diabolical Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The project scored a two-season, 18-episode, straight-to-series order at Netflix with production slated to begin sometime in mid-2018. Ratched is an origins story, beginning in 1947, which will follow Ratched’s (Paulson's) journey and murderous progression through the mental health care system from nurse to full-fledged monster.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Scotland's Denise Mina, author of the Garnethill trilogy and three novels featuring Glasgow journalist Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, stopped by the Books+ podcast to discuss crime fiction and true crime.