Media Murder for Monday - Labor Day Edition

Hard to believe another week has flown by, but it's Monday again and that means it's time for another edition of the latest crime drama roundup:

MOVIES

Quentin Tarantino has been adding a number of notable names to the cast of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood over the last few months, but he's finally cast his Charles Manson, Damon Herriman. Herriman joins a cast headlined by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, but also includes Dakota Fanning, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, James Marsden, Emile Hirsch, Lena Dunham, Mike Moh, Burt Reynolds, Damian Lewis, and more.

Emmy winner Michael Chiklis and Kyle Schmid are set to star opposite Bruce Willis in the crime thriller, 10 Minutes Gone, which Brian A. Miller will direct from a script by Kelvin Mao and Jeff Jingle. The plot follows a man who loses ten minutes of his memory due to being hit by a stray bullet during a bank heist gone wrong. He must put the pieces of his broken memory together in order to find out who sabotaged the job and took the money, all while being pursued by a powerful crime boss hellbent on recovering the cash.

Filmmaker Deon Taylor is set to direct Sony Screen Gems’ Exposure, from Peter A. Dowling’s spec script. Exposure follows a rookie Detroit African-American female cop who stumbles upon corrupt officers who are murdering a drug dealer, an incident captured by her body cam. They pursue her through the night in an attempt to destroy the footage, but to make matters worse, they’ve tipped off a criminal gang that she’s responsible for the dealer’s death.

Momentum Pictures has acquired U.S. rights to the Ron Perlman-starring crime drama Asher, and has set a December 7 theatrical release date. The project centers on Asher (Perlman), a Mossad-agent-turned-gun-for-hire near the end of his killing days, who breaks the hitman oath when he meets Sophie (Famke Janssen) on a job gone sideways. In order to live a real life before it’s too late, he must kill the man he was for one last chance at becoming the man he always wanted to be. Richard Dreyfuss and Peter Facinelli co-star.

TELEVISION

Lee Child is planning major television adaptations of his Jack Reacher books after fans complained to him about Tom Cruise’s portrayal of the larger-than-life hero in two Hollywood movies. Child hopes that a deal will be signed by November for productions that will devote between 10 and 12 hours to each book. Asked about the cast, he said: "That’s the great thing about television. It’s much less star-driven than feature films. So it doesn’t need to be a so-called A-list guy."

Harlan Coben inked an exclusive deal with Netflix to develop 14 existing titles and future projects, including his upcoming novel Run Away into English-language and foreign-language series as well as films that will premiere on Netflix worldwide. Coben will serve as an executive producer on all projects. He currently has two crime drama series on Netflix: Safe, starring Michael C. Hall, and the 2015 French series No Second Chance. 

Avengers producers Joe and Anthony Russo have firmed a deal with Netflix for an India and Thailand shoot for Dhaka, a kidnap extraction drama that will star Chris Hemsworth and marks the feature directorial debut of Sam Hargrave. Dhaka is an action film in which Hemsworth has to liberate a kidnapped Indian boy who is being hidden in Dhaka. Physically brave but an emotional coward, the man has to come to terms with his identity and sense of self.

NCIS veterans Michael Weatherly And Cote De Pablo are teaming up for a new CBS show, although fans of their "Tiva" romance and characters from the NCIS series may be disappointed. The duo will work together as executive producers on a developing drama, called MIA, and neither actor is attached to star in the series. The project follows a newly minted homicide detective who is assigned to an experienced, by-the-book partner to solve cases in Miami. She struggles to keep the personal entanglements of her final undercover assignment from jeopardizing her future.

British-Chinese rising star Jing Lusi, who appears in the Warner Bros. hit Crazy Rich Asians, has been cast in Amazon’s psychological thriller series The Feed, alongside Guy Burnet, Nina Toussaint White, David Thewlis and Michelle Fairley. The Feed, based on the novel by Nick Clark Windo, is set in London and centers on a technology implanted into people’s brains allowing them to share information and memories instantly. 

Epix has given a formal 10-episode series order to Our Lady, LTD, a modern noir drama starring Oscar winner Ben Kingsley, from Patriot creator Steve Conrad and Epix’s sister studio MGM Television. Production is slated to begin this fall in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with an eye toward a 2019 premiere. Written by Conrad and Patriot co-producer Bruce Terris, Our Lady, LTD follows James, a young grifter, as he attempts to prey upon Pastor Byron Brown (Kingsley), who turns out to be far more dangerous than he suspects.

The HBO Asia series Miss Sherlock will be available to HBO’s U.S. subscribers across all of the channel’s platforms as of September. Co-produced with Hulu in Japan, the eight-part series is HBO’s first Japanese original and re-envisions Arthur Conan Doyle iconic characters played by women. Yuko Takeuchi stars in the title role, while her crime-solving partner, Dr. Wato Tachibana, is played by Shihori Kanjiya.

Gwyneth Hughes, writer of the BBC and HBO’s The Girl, has created a feature-length drama about slavery in modern Britain for the BBC, titled Doing Money. The project will star Romanian actress Anca Dumitra and Downton Abbey’s Allen Leech and tells the story of Ana, a young Romanian woman snatched in broad daylight from a London street, trafficked to Ireland, and used as a sex slave in a series of "pop up" brothels. 

Mr. Robot's fourth season on USA will be its last and will feature an extended run of twelve episodes instead of eight before bowing out. The critically-acclaimed hacker drama starring Rami Malek debuted in 2015, with Malek's breakout performance earning him an Emmy. The fourth and final season of Mr. Robot will air in 2019.

Justified's Walton Goggins will headline and executive produce the upcoming eight-episode second season of the spy thriller Deep State. He'll take over for Mark Strong, who starred in the first season, and will play Nathan Miller, a former CIA operative who now works in the private sector as a "Michael Clayton-like" fixer for the deep state. Also joining the series as new cast members are Victoria Hamilton (The Crown) as Meaghan Sullivan, a Republican U.S. senator who is determined to bring the illicit activities of the deep state to light; Lily Banda as Aicha Konaté, a Malian aid worker intent on improving things for her country; and Shelley Conn, who plays Miller’s ex-wife. Returning cast members for the second season include Joe Dempsie, Karima McAdams, Alistair Petrie and Anastasia Griffiths.

Glee alum Blake Jenner has been set as the male lead in What/If, Netflix’s social thriller anthology drama series starring Renée Zellweger. What/If explores the ripple effects of what happens when acceptable people start doing unacceptable things. Each season will tackle a different morality tale inspired by culturally consequential source material, and the power of a single fateful decision to change the trajectory of an entire life. 

Paulina Singer is set for a recurring role in CBS All Access’ straight-to-series psychological thriller Tell Me a Story, from Kevin Williamson and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment. Written by Williamson, Tell Me a Story, which co-stars Billy Magnussen and Kim Catrall, takes the world’s most beloved fairy tales and re-imagines them as a dark and twisted psychological thriller. 

HBO revealed that new episodes of True Detective Season 3 will drop January 2019 and released the first teaser for the season. The preview features Mahershala Ali as Detective Wayne Hays, a man tormented by an unsolved case involving two missing children in Arkansas near the Ozark mountain range. Not much is known about the plot other than that it will take place over three different time periods, and Hays' quest to solve the disappearances will uncover even more disturbing details about the case as time moves on.

NCIS: New Orleans is bringing in a brand new character to serve as a leader, with Necar Zadegan playing a special agent by the name of Hannah Khoury. She steps in to take a leadership position within the team following the assassination attempt that left Pride very seriously wounded in the Season 4 finale. She won't turn up in the first episode of the season, which focuses on the existing team scouring New Orleans to try and find the woman who tried to assassinate him. Her first appearance will be in the second episode of Season 5, airing on October 2. She may not take over for Pride on a permanent basis, but she'll likely carry at least part of the leadership load in the fourth season.

NYPD Blue alumna Jacqueline Obradors is set for a key recurring role on the upcoming fifth season of Amazon’s Bosch. Based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels, Bosch stars Titus Welliver as homicide Detective Harry Bosch, Jamie Hector as Jerry Edgar, Amy Aquino as Lt. Grace Billets, Madison Lintz as Maddie Bosch and Lance Reddick as Deputy Chief Irvin Irving. Obradors will play the fast learning and good at hiding her nerves, Detective Christina Vega, who’s been brought up to work in homicide. 

PODCASTS/VIDEOS/RADIO

DP Lyle has a new podcast series on Authors on the Air called Criminal Mischief: The Art and Science of Crime Fiction. Episode #1 focused on Murder and Motives, and Episode #2 discussed the Cause and Manner of Death.

Michigan Public Radio spoke with Michigan writer Steve Hamilton, who went from studying computers to penning award-winning mystery novels including his Alex McKnight mystery series

Authors on the Air host Pam Stack welcomed investigative journalist and award-winning author Hank Phillippi Ryan to the show to discuss Trust Me, her latest novel.

Authors on the Air's Pam Stack also spoke with author Dharma Kelleher, who writes gritty crime fiction from a transgender/queer perspective. She is the author of three thrillers including Chaser, the first book in her new Jinx Ballou bounty hunter series.

Host Debbi Mack interviewed thriller author Jame DiBiasio, author of the thrillers Gaijin Cowgirl and Cowgirl X, on the Crime Cafe podcast.

Suspense Radio's Story Blender podcast welcomed author Peter James to discuss psychopaths (both fictional and real), what makes for a great crime story, and the three aspects of emotionally engaging fiction.

Crime Friction was joined by Alex Segura, author of the Pete Fernandez series.

Writer Types had three great interviews from writers David Gordon (The Bouncer), Nikki Dolson (All Things Violent) and Terrence McCauley (The Fairfax Incident), pus a report from the San Diego Festival of Books.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham talked about the Sharp Objects adaptation and also celebrated women in translation month with a look at some translated mystery books.

Speaking of Mysteries has added two new podcasts recently: an interview with Olen Steinhauer about his new novel, The Middle Man, about a left-wing resistance movement called Massive Brigade that causes the FBI, which had been monitoring the organization, to put the investigation into hyperdrive; and another with T. Jefferson Parker, to talk about his second novel featuring PI Roland Ford, in which homegrown terrorists are targeting the drone pilots who flew bombing missions in Middle East.

On the latest Crime Syndicate podcast, Canadian crime author Dietrich Kalteis stops by to discuss his latest novel, Poughkeepsie Shuffle, with host Michael Pool.

THEATER

A staging of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None is coming to the The Pyrle Theater in Greensboro, North Carolina, with a run from September 9 to October 7. The classic story follows ten strangers trapped on a dangerous island, each having a secret, until one by one, they begin to die under suspicious circumstances.

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