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
Solstice Studios is partnering with Fast and Furious producers on the action thriller, Shadow Run, from Magnum P.I. reboot scribe, Joe Gazzam. The project tells the story of a CIA agent who devoted five years of his life to capturing the Russian spy who killed his wife. His triumph turns into a nightmare when he’s told that, not only is America trading the spy away – but he’s been assigned to make the swap. Now he’s stuck with his mortal enemy on an off-the-books "shadow run" where nothing happens as planned and everyone is trying to kill them.
The S.H.U., a social thriller starring Edi Gathegi (Twilight Saga; X-Men: First Class), has been picked up for world sales by Los Angeles-based Premiere Entertainment Group. The story follows an affluent African American psychiatrist (Gathegi) into federal prison after he is found guilty of murdering his wife. A victim of systematic racism, he eventually finds himself in solitary confinement, slowly descending into madness and pushed to breaking point by an abusive female guard.
A trailer was released for The Tax Collector, which centers on Shia LaBeouf’s Creeper and Bobby Soto’s David, two "tax collectors" who work for a crime lord known as Wizard, collecting his cut of the profits from local gangs’ illicit dealings and operations. The Tax Collector drops on VOD and in select theaters on August 7.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Evil Doghouse Studios has secured the rights to Lars Lenth's popular Norwegian book series about eco-terrorist, Rino Gulliksen. Lenth’s book series, not yet released in the U.S., follows lawyer Leonard Vangen and the misanthropic muscle-for-hire Gulliksen as the two find themselves unlikely allies in the darkly comedic eco-thriller.
Éric Rochant, the creator of breakout French spy drama The Bureau, is headed for his U.S. television debut, an untitled global spy drama that centers on the lives of intelligence officers from the U.S., China, Russia, UK, and France. The series will follow these spies, who are involved in missions that make them meet, fight, or manipulate each other—either as allies or enemies—in the field and in cyberspace.
Fox is planning to produce all six of its pilot orders for this year’s development season and will continue to ramp up its off-cycle pilot orders. The pickups include the drama, The Cleaning Lady, starring Élodie Yung as an on-call cleaning lady for the mob, and Blood Relative, a forensic genealogy-themed crime drama starring Tyrone Marshall Brown, Tate Donovan, and Melissa Leo.
ABC announced plans to shoot five pilots once production can safely resume. One of those is Rebel, inspired by the life of Erin Brockovich. It stars Katey Segal as Annie "Rebel" Bello, a blue-collar legal advocate without a law degree—a funny, messy, brilliant and fearless woman who cares desperately about the causes she fights for and the people she loves.
ABC will not be moving forward with the Revenge spin-off it was developing for next year's 2020-2021 season. The new series would have followed the same blueprint the original established with Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp), but this time following a young Latinx immigrant, who would be "guided by one of the original series' favorite characters" to exact revenge on the people who murdered her mother. There was much speculation that tech mogul Nolan Ross (Gabriel Mann), Emily's main partner-in-crime in the original series, would have been been part of the new project and that the spin-off would be turned into an anthology series.
CBS’s action crime drama, Magnum P.I., starring Jay Hernandez, is targeting a mid-August tentative production start date for its upcoming third season. While a spike in coronavirus infections throughout the continental U.S. is raising doubts about production restart plans in COVID-19 hot spots like California and Georgia, sites like Hawaii have emerged as appealing alternatives, especially since Hawaii has the lowest rate of infection and death of any U.S. state.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO
Two Crime Writers and a Microphone had a special episode, talking about the Locked Up Festival being held online in support of the Trussell Trust in the UK.
Crime Cafe host, Debbi Mack, interviewed crime writer Saralyn Richard about her Detective Oliver Parrott mystery series.
Writer Types guest co-host, Cheryl Head, joined Eric Beetner to chat with Steve Hockensmith (Holmes on the Range) and Sara Sligar (Take Me Apart).
Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Cathi Stoler to talk about Bar None, the debut title in her "Murder on the Rocks" series.
Suspense Radio's Beyond the Cover was joined by bestselling author Scott Turow to talk about his latest legal thriller, The Last Trial.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club featured a "Cozy Episode," highlighting three cozy mysteries they've enjoyed reading lately.
The Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine podcast featured a reading of Angela Zeman's intriguing, meaningful, and inventive historical story "The First Tale of Roxanne"; and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's podcast had author David Dean reading his moving and suspenseful tale, "The Duelist."
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