There were two recent announcements involving Crime Story projects that we are delighted to bring to our readers’ attention.


As Deadline reported yesterday, “the podcast-to-TV boom continues with HBO adapting the third season of Serial as a limited series. The network is developing the remake with rising writer/director Shola Amoo and exec produced by Lebron James and former HBO exec [and Crime Story Publisher/Editor] Kary Antholis.”

“The third season of the award-winning podcast, which arguably set in motion the current boom for non-fiction audio series, was set in the Cleveland justice system. Unlike the first two seasons, which featured one case, it looked at the system overall with focuses on cases before the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas.”

“The television adaptation will follow a young cop and the man he’s accused of beating, it illuminates the deeply flawed inner workings of a middle-American courthouse and how the system impacts every person it touches: cop, lawyer, and citizens accused of and victimized by crimes.”

Shola Amoo is set to write, direct and exec produce the series. Amoo wrote and directed the Sundance-premiered feature The Last Tree.

The full executive producing team includes Serial host Sarah Koenig along with Serial Productions’ Emmanuel Dzotsi and Alissa Shipp; James, along with his SpringHill Company colleagues Maverick Carter, Jamal Henderson and Eric Oberland; and Antholis via Crime Story Media.

Koenig and her producing partner Julie Snyder were guests on one of the earliest Crime Story podcast episodes during which they discussed the creation of the season of Serial at the center of this limited series.

You can listen to the Koenig and Snyder interview here, and you can read the full Deadline story about the miniseries here.


On Monday, Deadline announced that Apple TV+ is “nearing a series order” for In With the Devil, a six-hour limited series written by Dennis Lehane, based on the true crime memoir by James Keene. Michael R. Roskam, who also helmed Lehane’s script in making The Drop, with direct all 6 episodes of the series.

Deadline also reported that Taron Egerton has signed on to star as the author and Richard Jewell‘s Paul Walter Hauser is in talks to join him as suspected serial killer, Larry Hall. The series will shoot in New Orleans.

According to the Deadline story, “Keene was a young Chicago kid who was a standout football player headed for a pro career when a few turns in the wrong direction caught him a decade-long prison sentence with no chance of parole. The son of a Chicago cop was offered — by the prosecutor who put him behind bars — the chance to be sprung from prison… The stakes were high. The same prosecutor convicted a man named Larry Hall for abducting and killing a 15-year-old, just one of perhaps 19 other women he killed. The killer could be released on appeal. Keene’s task was to ingratiate himself with the murderer, in prison, and get him to confess to two murders.”

The series will be executive produced by Bradley Thomas, Dan and Ryan Friedkin for Imperative Entertainment, Richard Plepler via Eden Productions, Emjag Productions’ Scott Lambert and Alexandra Milchan, and Kary Antholis via Crime Story Media.

You can read the full Deadline story here.

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