Here's the latest post-holiday news of crime dramas and more:
MOVIES
Chris Evans (most recently Captain America), is replacing James Franco in the lead role of the biopic Iceman, based on Anthony Bruno's book, The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer.
The gadget wizard "Q" in next year's James Bond movie Skyfall will be the first Q in the franchise's history to be younger than 007. Ben Whishaw, recently cast in the role, is 31 to titular star Daniel Craig's 43 years.
TV
All you spy thriller writers and fans, take note: the NSA is allowing cameras in for a rare public peek at the secretive agency. National Geographic TV's Inside the NSA will air in January.
ABC's Castle series is planning a film-noir episode, where Castle and Beckett imagine themselves in the 1940s, with stars Natan Filliion as a Sam Spade-ish private eye and Stana Katic as a gangster's moll.
To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens next year, BBC television and radio are planning nearly three months of special programs starting today. Among the highlights are a three-part adaptation of Great Expectations written by Sarah Phelps, and writer Gwyneth Hughes is going to finish Dickens' unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood for BBC Two.
Shaw Media put in an order for ten episodes of Out of Time, about a regular female cop from the future who finds herself trapped in present-day Vancouver. The series is from indie producer Reunion Pictures and starts shooting in Vancouver in early 2012.
Gale Anne Hurd is developing an Area 51 series based on the book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen. It centers on two men working on the base who are "thrust into danger when they uncover secrets that the government will protect at any cost."
If you were following TVLine's "Male Law Enforcement Crushes Bracket Tournament," the final results are in: NCIS actor Tony DiNozzo (who plays Michael Weatherly on the show) reigned victorious at the end of the 64-player, single-elimination tourney. Now, it's the women's turn.
PODCASTS/RADIO
NPR's Audie Cornish talks to writer Richard Preston, who completed the late Michael Crichton's scientific thriller novel Micro, centered around nano-technology, corporate greed and murder.
THEATER
The world premiere of The Game's Afoot (or Holmes for the Holidays) debuted November 25 at the Cleveland Play House in Ohio. From the pen of Tony Award-nominated Ken Ludwig, the play centers on famed stage actor William Gillette at his Connecticut Castle, recovering from an attempt on his life following a performance of his renowned play, Sherlock Holmes. When Gillete's home becomes the setting for a murder on Christmas Eve, he must use the Sherlock Holmes crime-solving skills he made famous on stage to catch the culprit.
GAMES
The video game Murder She Wrote was popular enough (a "best-selling game") that game maker Legacy Interactive has announced a Murder She Wrote 2 due in 2012.
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