MOVIES
Soon after the debut of the best-selling book The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, Tom Cruise optioned rights for a film and was set to star. Due to problems at United Artists, the project has now been sold to Fox 2000, with George Clooney in the lead role, and Chris McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander writing the screenplay. The book is based on the true-life murderer (or murderers) known as Il Mostro, who killed more than a dozen people from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s without being caught.
Summit Entertainment, the same company behind the Twilight films, has optioned both film and TV rights to the young adult thriller Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, a book that's not even going to be published until September of this year. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)
Warner is planning on an English adaptation of the debut novel Snabba Cash by Jens Lapidus, a Swedish criminal defense lawyer and author whose writing has been compared to James Ellroy and Dennis Lehane. It's an account of the Stockholm underworld and the first of a planned trilogy called "The Stockholm Noir Trilogy." Producer Fredrik Wikstrom put an early trailer online, generating a lot of buzz and sparking a bidding war.
TV
J.J. Abrams's Bad Robot company is developing Pulp, an hour-long crime drama "set in a slightly heightened reality," which has been compared to Pulp Fiction.
Collider has a number of interviews with the cast of ABC's police procedural drama Detroit 187, including Natalie Martinez, who plays Det. Ariana Sanchez.
Fans of the Mentalist can breathe a sigh of relief. Star Simon Baker has reportedly reached a new agreement with Warner Bros. that extends his current contract another year — and guarantees the actor an estimated $30 million payday. Now that's a Merry Christmas.
The new A&E series Breakout Kings, which follows an unusual partnership between the U.S. Marshals' office and a group of convicts as they work to catch fugitives on the run, has been given a premiere date of March 13 at 10 PM. Also, the new AMC series The Killing will debut on April 3 at 10 PM. The series is about the murder of a young girl in Seattle and the subsequent police investigation, tying together three distinct stories around a single murder including the detectives assigned to the case, the victim's grieving family and the suspects.
Sebastian Roche (General Hospital, Fringe) is joining the cast of the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds as a recurring player and possibly a new love interest for Emily Prentiss.
PODCASTS/RADIO
BB7 Radio is airing Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon this week; it will be available online for seven days.
You know, I do like the Mentalist and good luck to the bloke but 30 mill? Makes you think how much the telly companies actually make!
Posted by: Paul D Brazill | January 10, 2011 at 11:21 AM
It does seem a bit high to me, too. I can't help but think that you could probably staff an entirely new drama (or 2 or 3) of relatively unknown but fine actors for that same amount of money.
Posted by: BV Lawson | January 12, 2011 at 01:09 AM