- Currently in pre-production is the film Night Train, based on the novel by Martin Amis, with Steven Soderbergh as executive producer and starring Sigourney Weaver and Michael Madsen (hat tip to Shelf Awareness).
- The film based on the first book in Stieg Larsson's crime novel trilogy, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, hit Swedish cinemas this weekend, featuring Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist
in the lead role of reporter Mikael Blomkvist.
- The Independent Crime blog wonders if Victor Gischler is taking over Hollywood, with three screenplays optioned recently, including Go-Go Girls of The Apocalypse, Pulp Boy, co-written with Anthony Neil Smith, and Gun Monkeys.
- Guy Richie's Sherlock finally gets its release date (Christmas 2009) after some controversy and delays.
- Here's the trailer for Public Enemies, a film which follows notorious gangsters John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) and Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum), and the feds who try to take them down during the 1930s. Other stars include Christian Bale, Billy Crudup, and Marion Cotillard.
- A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered Clive Cussler to pay $13.9 million in legal fees to the production company that turned his novel Sahara into a box-office flop.
- Director Marcel Langenegger will develop the Phoenix Pictures thriller Mile Zero as a possible starring vehicle for Milla Jovovich.
- Michael Brandt and Derek Haas have signed on to adapt upcoming Richard Doetsch supernatural thriller novel The Thirteenth Hour for New Line Cinema.
- Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan will star in the Warner Brother detective comedy A Couple of Cops, about a pair of cops who track down a stolen baseball card, rescue a Mexican beauty and deal with gangsters and laundered drug money.
TV
- Central Partnership's $12 million, 24-part TV adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective stories has been delayed six months because of scripting problems and Russia's acute economic crisis.
- A pilot, written by Graham Yost and based on the short story "Fire in the Hole" by Elmore Leonard and centered around Kentucky-based U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, has been given the greenlight by FX.
- Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica) was interviewed about his new role in Law and Order: UK. And if you want to get a "closer look" at Bamber, you can check this out.
- The season finale of Burn Notice topped the cable ratings charts.
- William Peterson, best known as Gil Grisson in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, will attend the Cannes Mip TV trade fair this month to celebrate the series' 200th episode. The show and spinoff series CSI: Miami and CSI: New York are the best-rated dramas on many market-dominant broadcast networks worldwide, such as France's TF1 and Spain's Telecinco.
- TV Guide interviewed Tom Selleck about his latest Jesse Stone outing, which proved to be a "rare sighting" of a TV movie in the Nielsen Top 10.
- Although ITV is cancelling some of its high-profile dramas, when asked about the channel's future direction, Laura Mackie, head of ITV drama, said: "Crime thrillers and 20th century are things that ITV does very well."
- Although Life on Mars was unfortunately cancelled, it had the rare opportunity to go out on its own terms by wrapping up the story line and not leaving fans hanging.
- Murdock Mysteries began its second season in the UK.
- The Telegraph interviewed Robert Vaughn (Man From Uncle) about his current role in the British TV series Hustle, the sole American in a cast playing a group of con artists.
- Oscar Nominee Mellisa Leo has signed on to play an unnamed civil rights lawyer in the post-Katrina New Orleans drama created by David Simon (The Wire).
PODCASTS/WEB
- Podcast site CrimeWAV.com received permission from Dashiell Hammett’s grandson to record "The Barber and His Wife," the first short story Hammett wrote, which you can hear on the web site this week.
- Brian Gruley, Chicago bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, is (not surprisingly) featured in a video interview on the WSJ web site about his debut thriller, Starvation Lake.
- You can catch and interview here with Ed Brubaker and Zoe Bell about their crime fiction web show Angel of Death.
- Radio New Zealand has an interview with former DI Jackie Malton, the inpiration for Lynda La Plante's Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect.
- Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe appear this week in Bones and Silence on BBC Radio 7.
Nice roundup. Thanks.
Posted by: Patti Abbott | March 11, 2009 at 04:52 PM
Thanks for stopping by, Patti! I admit to having a certain fondness for these Media Murder features, myself.
Posted by: BV Lawson | March 11, 2009 at 05:23 PM