Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

• Sam Worthington (Avatar and Terminator Salvation) will star in an adaptation of The Last Days of American Crime. Based on the graphic novel by Rick Remender, it's set in a near future where the U.S. government plans in secret to broadcast a signal making it impossible for anyone to knowingly commit unlawful acts. 

• In yet another graphic novel adaptation, Fuqua will direct the film version of Miss: Better Living Through Crime, a story centered around a poor white girl and a black pimp who forge a partnership as killers for hire.

TV

• Lorraine Bracco (The Sopranos), has signed on for the pilot episode of TNT's Rizzoli, based on Tess Gerritsen's Jane Rizzoli series. Bracco will play Rizzoli's [Angie Harmon] mother, Angela, "who despite her tough Boston exterior is a beautiful woman, loyal wife and mother of
  three."

• David Suchet is reprising his role of Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in a new production of Murder on the Orient Express, currently filming in London. It will air sometime in 2010 on PBS' Masterpiece Mystery.

• Amaury Nolasco (Prison Break) is set to star opposite Radha Mitchell in the A&E drama pilot The Quickening, where he'll play a homicide detective formerly married to Mitchell’s bipolar detective Maggie Bird.   

• Tim Matheson (Burn Notice) will direct the pilot for the 13-episode FOX cop drama Jack and Dan. Diana-Maria Riva (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) has been cast opposite Colin Hanks and Bradley Whitford, playing Lt. Katerine Anderson, the cops’ boss and a former partner of Dan (Whitford). 

• USA is going to pair Burn Notice and White Collar on Thursday nights beginning January 28 at 9 p.m. Another USA crime dramedy, Psych, is returning Friday, January 29 at 10:00 p.m. with the back half of its fourth season.

• Jason Lee (My Name is Earl) has signed on for the lead role in the upcoming TNT pilot Delta Blue, about Dwight Hendricks, a Memphis cop who moonlights as an Elvis impersonator and lives with his mother. Also on board, Sam Hennings will play Dwight's partner Whitehead; Robyn Lively will play Dwight's ex-wife Charlene whose catering company received a contract from the Memphis Police; and Leonard Earl Howze will portray a detective who works closely with Dwight and Whitehead. The pilot is produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov's Smokehouse Pictures and Warner Horizon.

• The TV series based on Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne novels is currently in production and will probably be on screen in late Autumn of 2010.