MOVIES
The winners of this year's BAFTA Awards (the British version of the Oscars) were announced Sunday. Winners included a Best Film nod to Argo and Best Director to Ben Affleck and an award for Best British Film given to Skyfall.
Paramount is adapting the bestselling French thriller Syndrome E by Franck Thilliez. The supernatural procedural follows a detective named Lucie Hennebelle who teams up with a a Paris cop to investigate a film embedded with subliminal images that lead to murder and the personification of evil. (Hat to Omnimystery News)
New Regency is taking on an adaptation of the true-crime memoir True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, by reporter Michael Finkel. The plot follows Finkel, a disgraced NYT reporter who discovered that an accused murderer had stolen his identity and would only give his story to the reporter. Jonah Hill, James Franco and Felicity Jones have signed aboard the project to star, with Rupert Goold directing.
Omnimystery News reported that production has begun on the film adaptation of Elmore Leonard's crime novel The Switch, with a potential release date later this year. The project stars Jennifer Aniston as Margaret "Mickey" Dawson, a loving, naive housewife whose husband has been embezzling millions for years and keeping the cash in off-shore accounts without her knowledge.
Ralph Fiennes and Mads Mikkelsen are in talks to star in the film adaptation of the John Le Carre novel Our Kind of Traitor. Ewan McGregor was already cast as the male half of a couple who get mixed up with a Russian money launderer and find themselves caught between the Russian Mafia and the British Secret Service.
TV
Actress Kim Raver (24, Gray's Anatomy) has landed the starring role in the new NCIS:LA spinoff for CBS. She'll play Special Agent Paris, joining joining John Corbett who plays the male lead. The premise follows a mobile “Red” team of agents forced to live and work together as they crisscross the country solving crimes.
NBC has given a pilot order for a remake of Ironside, the series from 1967 to 1975 that featured Raymond Burr as a wheelchair-bound detective. Sopranos story editor Michael Caleo is writing the pilot, and Blair Underwood (LA Law) is in talks to star as the lead.
The small-screen adaptation of the film Beverly Hills Cop has landed Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black) to direct and executive produce the pilot.
Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad) has been cast in the NBC drama pilot Bloodline, written by David Graziano and directed by Peter Berg, about an orphaned young girl caught in the struggle between two warring families of mercenaries and killers.
British actor Max Fowler and 18-year-old newcomer Bex Taylor-Klaus have been added to the third season of AMC’s drama series The Killing. The duo join returning stars Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman and fellow new cast member Elias Koteas in the drama, which will center around homicide detective Sarah Linden's investigation into the disappearance of another teen girl.
Despite ratings that are lower overall this season, Castle is getting an additional episode order from ABC.
Anthony Zuiker, one of the creators of CSI, has out a casting for a new mystery reality competition for ABC. They are seeking "armchair detectives, perceptive problem solvers or anyone who believes they have the mental acuity to go up against other like-minded sleuths for a huge cash prize."
Tonight in the UK, the series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, based on Kerry Greenwood's novels, gets its UK premiere on Alibi.
PODCASTS/VIDEO
The guests this week on Suspense Radio are Brett Battles, Wendy Corsi Staub and Amnon Kabatchnik.
BBC Radio 4's "Books & Authors" podcast for February 10 included Scottish crime writer Christopher Brookmyre talking about his turning to science fiction for inspiration.
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