Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The Galway News has a brief report about filming that has begun on two different versions of The Guards by crime fiction author Ken Bruen. The first is a TV pilot by Magma Films starring Iain Glen (Resident Evil and Tomb Raider) as Bruen's protagonist Jack Taylor. The other production is a feature film also based on the same Bruen book and starring award-winning actor Brendan Gleeson.

Just released this coming week is a new DVD collection, Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics I, with five restored movies from the ’50s. There are also many extras in the set, including an interview with James Ellroy, which Kansas City Star reviewer Robert Butler describes as Ellroy unleashing "an ear-burningly profane, politically incorrect (borderline racist, overtly homophobic) commentary that is simultaneously offensive and hilarious."

Former wrestler "The Rock" (real name, Dwayne Johnson) and Billy Bob Thornton are set to star in a police procedural action movie by CBS Films titled Faster. The script will be written by Joe and Tony Gayton, with George Tillman directing. It should start production early next year.

Rumors have Leonardo DiCaprio taking on the remake of The Third Man, the story of pulp author Holly Martins who comes to post-WWII Vienna for the funeral of his friend Harry Lime, a role immortalized by Orson Welles. If the project comes to pass, the script would be written by Steven Knight, with DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire in the leading roles.

Milla Jovovich will star in the upcoming psychological thriller Faces, about a woman who barely survives an attack by a serial killer which leaves her with a head injury causing "face-blindness" (a real-life neurological disorder called prosopagnosia). No longer able to recognize faces, she must navigate a world in which facial features change each time she loses sight of them, as the killer closes in.

TV

Dana Stabenow reports that Evergreen Films has acquired the screen rights to her Kate Shugak novels, with the intention of making a television series.

Denis Leary (Rescue Me) and Apostle Films are working on developing programs that include Gattaca, a TV series remake of the original futuristic police procedural film; also two USA Network dramas -- a procedural drama called Partners in Crime, about divorced spouses who are private eyes; and a heavyweight drama called Scales of Justice, about an overweight former cop who teams up with his support group to fight crime.

HBO has reportedly ordered an adaptation of the 2007 thriller The Follower by author Jason Starr for a series, with Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Less than Zero) set to pen the screenplay.

NBC is working on a new untitled pilot about a crime-solving magician whose career is washed up after he develops stage fright and agoraphobia and is then approached by an elite law enforcement group to use his talents to solve tough cases. One wonders (should NBC pick it up) if it will go head-to-head with a similar magician-crime-drama ABC is developing starring Penn and Teller.

TNT has ordered a drama pilot titled Delta Blues, from executive producer George Clooney and writer Liz Garcia (Cold Case), about a Memphis cop who moonlights as an Elvis impersonator and lives with his mother.

Media Rights Capital and David Fincher are teaming up for a new TV series, House of Cards, based on the political thriller novel by Michael Dobbs and the British miniseries of the same name. It will be set in the U.S., but keep the same focus of political ambition and blackmail.

USA Network's dramedy White Collar had a solid debut in the ratings. It stars Matthew Bomer as a con man who takes a job as an FBI consultant to avoid going back to jail.

Comments

[Patti Abbott]

One or more of these crime-solving magician shows sounds like Jonathan Creek, a British show in the late nineties and onward.

[BV Lawson]

Unfortunately, I've never been able to catch any episodes of that series, Patti. I also missed the Hal Linden and Harry Morgan series, "Blacke’s Magic" from the 80s. Of course, I do remember Bill Bixby as "The Magician," a TV series back in the 70s, which was only around for one year (and 4 years before Bixby turned into "The Incredible Hulk").