Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Jason Statham (Italian Job, The Transporter), is in talks to play the hardboiled professional thief Parker created by author Richard Stark (a/k/a Donald Westlake). The script is being adapted by John J. McLaughlin, who was co-writer for Black Swan.

Director Oliver Stone has added John Travolta and Uma Thurman (both of Pulp Fiction fame) to the cast of Savages, the film based on Don Winslow's novel. Travola will play Dennis, a burned-out DEA agent, and Thurman will play the mother of the young woman known as "O."

TV

The Killing (the original European version), starring Sofie Grabol as Nordic-sweater-wearing Copenhagen police detective Sarah Lund, has been nominated for the audience award at this year's Bafta ceremony. The American version, currently airing on AMC on Sunday nights, has been well-reviewed and is holding steady in the ratings.

The debut of Vera, the police procedural based on the Vera Stanhope novels by Gold Dagger-winning author Ann Cleeves, is scheduled for May 1st in the UK on ITV1. No word yet on any U.S. or Canadian future broadcasts for the series.

CBS cancelled the low-rated spy comedy Chaos after only three episodes. Because of the newly-opened hole in the schedule, the network is moving up the U.S. premiere of the hit Canadian police procedural Flashpoint to May 6th at 8 p.m.

Will we see Peter Lovesey's series with detective Peter Diamond, set in Bath in the U.K., on the small screen some time soon? Talks are only in the very earliest stages, but the Bath Marketing group Future Bath Plus has taken out an option on the series, and is working with Bath-based director Giles Foster (Foyle's War and The Four Seasons). (Hat tip to Janet Rudolph.)

The CBS police procedural Blue Bloods starring Tom Selleck is going through a shake-up. Creators and executive producers Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green are leaving the show, allegedly because CBS wants to make the show more of a procedural and less character-driven.

This Thursday's episode of Bones, Geoff Stults guest stars as Walter Sherman, a character from The Locator novels by Richard Greener, which follow a Vietnam veteran with an uncanny knack to locate people or things anywhere. Stults/Sherman are being spun off into a pilot for a new series called Finder.

Fans of the police procedural The Glades (about a homicide detective transplanted from Chicago to Florida after being forced into exile due to a bum rap) take heart: A&E has set Sunday, June 5th, as the premiere date for Season 2.

Comments

[Lance]

Just a minor clarification: A&E's The Glades is not a supernatural series. You may have been thinking of ABC's The Gates (now canceled), which had a supernatural element.

[BV Lawson]

Quite right, Lance! Too many similar letters, making my computer confused (ahem).