MOVIES
Alexander Skarsgard (star of True Blood) is in talks to join Brit Marling in The East, a film about an eco-terrorist group of the same name. Skarsgard would portray its leader, with Marling starring as an FBI investigator who infiltrates the group. Marling is also co-writing the script with director Zat Batmanglij.
Robert Harris is adapting his novel The Fear Index, a thriller about an impending meltdown in the financial markets, as a screenplay. Fox Studios grabbed the rights to Harris's novel when he had written just six of its 19 chapters.
Author Tony Black is working with director Richard Jobson for a movie version of Long Time Dead, the latest book in Black's series featuring Gus Drury, a former journalist and alcoholic who becomes a reluctant crime investigator. Black and Jobson are hoping to line up Dougray Scott to play Drury.
TV
Apparently the pilot for Longmire—based on Craig Allen Johnson's novels featuring widowed Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire—was successful enough to get the go-ahead for a 10-episode order from A&E. Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) will play a deputy opposite Robert Taylor in the title role.
Shane Brennan, the executive producer of CBS' NCIS franchises, is developing a show pilot based on the "King and Maxwell" novel series by David Baldacci, which feature former Secret Service agents turned private investigators.
The BBC is bringing Denise Mina's The Field of Blood, the first in the Paddy Meehan series, to the small screen. The Glasgow-set series will star David Morrissey, Peter Capaldi, Jonas Armstrong and Jayd Johnson and is being directed/written by David Kane. (Hat tip to Crimespree.)
Another new BBC crime drama I don't believe I've mentioned in a MMM post yet is The Body Farm, starring Tara Fitzgerald as forensic doctor Eve Lockhart and Keith Allen as Detective Inspector Hale. This is to be a six-part series, a sequel to the hit BBC One series Waking The Dead. (Hat tip to EuroCrime.)
Breaking Bad's Giancarlo Esposito has joined the drama pilot Over/Under. The show stars Rescue Me's Steven Pasquale as Paul, a gambling addict who loses his Wall Street job after making a bad trade that costs his company millions and then starts a high-end bookie business. Esposito will play Oliver, "a dry-witted and sophisticated artist who once taught Paul's wife Georgette and maintains a special fondness for his former student."
Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde has inspired several movie projects in the past, and now it may be the source for a series on ABC after the network bought a pilot titled Hide from Sheldon Turner's company Vendetta. The plot has a modern take on the tale as Grant Hyde, a thirtysomething wallflower ER doctor with a degenerative eye condition who begins to experience a strange side effect after a treatment to fix his eye problem. After going to sleep, he turnes into Hyde, "a fearless, gregarious personality who takes control where Grant cannot."
Crimespree has a nice roundup for you of all of the movies to be part of season one of the TNT Mystery Movie Night, featuring TV dramas based on novels by Scott Turow, Sandra Brown, Lisa Gardner, Richard North Patterson, April Smith and Mary and Carol Higgins Clark.
TNT announced the fall premiere dates for several shows, including the crime dramas The Closer, Southland, Rizzoli & Isles and Leverage.
Charlie Brooker is creating a crime detective spoof for Sky1 in the UK. Titled A Touch of Cloth, the TV movie is described as "an all-encompassing parody of every police procedural ever written" and stars New Street Law and Rebus actor John Hannah as DCI Jack Cloth, a maverick, heavy drinking loner who has thrown himself into his work following the mysterious death of his wife.
PODCASTS/RADIO
Laura Lippman joined NPR's Diane Rehm Show to talk about her latest novel, The Most Dangerous Thing.
Kathy Reichs appeared on NBC's Today Show to discuss her latest effort, Flash and Bones.
Jo Nesbo talked with fellow crime fiction author Mark Lawson about his new standalone thriller Headhunters and how he views the recent tragic events in Norway. (The Q&A starts about 20 minutes into the feed). Nesbo also gave an interview on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show.
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