David Tennant and Naomi Ackie among latest stars to join Netflix’s The Thursday Murder Club

David Tennant and Naomi Ackie are amongst the latest actors to sign on to Netflix’s adaptation of ‘The Thursday Club’.

The former ‘Doctor Who’ star, 55, and the ‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ actress, 31, will be joining the movie adaptation of Richard Osman’s 2020 crime-comedy novel of the same name.

As well as David and Naomi, Jonathan Pryce (‘The Two Popes’), Daniel Mays (‘Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget’) and Henry Lloyd-Hughes (‘Killing Eve’) will also be appearing in the flick, which follows a group of friends that gather in a retirement home to solve murders for fun, only to find they are caught in a real case.

During an appearance on his podcast ‘The Rest Is Entertainment’, Richard said: “There’s some great names and some more names coming as well.

“I think this is the greatest British cast assembled since the [‘Harry Potter’] movies.”

The film - which was previously confirmed to star Dame Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie - is being written and directed by ‘Home Alone’ filmmaker Chris Columbus, with production due to commence later in June.

‘The Thursday Murder Club’ started a hugely successful series of books from Richard that have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide - including ‘The Man Who Died Twice’, ‘The Bullet That Missed’, ‘The Last Devil to Die’ and a planned fifth book which is set to be released next year.

The ‘Pointless’ host previously revealed he had had a desire to write a crime novel for a number of years.

Richard told The Guardian newspaper: “I've always known how hard it is to write a crime novel and I have such respect for people who do it. I never felt I was in a position where I could do it properly and give it the time it deserved until about 18 months ago.

“I decided I would start it and once I got going I found that I couldn’t stop. But I decided I wasn’t going to tell anybody because I didn't want to be that person who goes around saying, ‘Oh yeah, I'm writing a book’, but it never happens.

“When I got to the end I thought, well, there at least I’ve found out that I can do it. But I had no idea what people would make of it.”