MOVIES
Universal is planning a remake of the classic movie Scarface from 1983 that starred Al Pacino as a notorious gangster (which was itself a remake of the 1932 Paul Muni-George Raft movie). However, the studio says this film is "not a sequel or outright remake," despite the fact it will be helmed by Martin Bregman, the producer who made the Pacino version.
Actor Jeremy Renner, who starred in The Hurt Locker and earned an Oscar nomination for The Town, is working with Black Bear Pictures to adapt J. North Conway's true-crime book King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America. Renner will portray George Leslie, who secretly put together a crew and masterminded a heist of nearly $3 million in cash and securities from the Manhattan Savings Institution in 1878.
Charlize Theron is in talks to star in and produce Cities of Refuge, a crime thriller by Brandon Willer, optioned by Inferno Entertainment. Theron would star as a female investigator brought in to solve a brutal murder and kidnapping in which things aren’t what they seem (which is a vague generic plotline, but the project is still in its early phases).
20th Century Fox is adapting Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel, a futuristic murder mystery about a time with an overpopulation problem and where robots are banned from Earth. When an Ambassador who wants to ease the anti-robot laws is found murdered, a detective and a "human-looking robot" are assigned to the case.
Millennium Entertainment has acquired the US rights to Rampart, a movie co-written by crime novelist Elmore Leonard and director Oren Moverman, which they hope to release later this year. The film stars Woody Harrelson as Dave Brown, a cop long ago unleashed from the rules of the Los Angeles Police Department, and is based in part on a real LAPD scandal from the 1990s. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)
A lost Alfred Hitchcock movie was screened in L.A. this past week. The only copy of the 1923 film The White Shadow was found in a New Zealand garden shed along with other films hoarded by former cinema projectionist Jack Murtagh, who died in 1989. Although Hitch didn't direct this one, he wrote it, designed the sets, edited the footage and director Graham Cutts's assistant.
The Steven Soderbergh movie remake of the 1960s TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is attracting a lot of attention from the casting agencies in Hollywood. The actors being considered are a who's who of the current A-list men including Ryan Gosling, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Alexander Skarsgard, Bradley Cooper, Ryan Reynolds, Chris Pine, Christian Bale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jon Hamm, Russell Crowe, Robert Pattinson, Michael Fassbender and Ewan McGregor.
TV
ABC's supernatural show Once Upon a Time debuts next month, but apparently the network thinks another fairy-tale series might be a good move. The unnamed pilot centers on a female cop who, after pursuing a seemingly unsolvable case, discovers a magical world that exists within New York City.
Continuing its pilot-buying spree, ABC has also given the greenlight to several other project including: a new legal drama pilot from Steven Bochco (L.A. Law, Philly and Raising the Bar); Zero Hour, a mystery drama from Prison Break creator Paul Scheuring; and two pilots focusing on intelligence agencies, Safehouse (CIA) and Murder Season (FBI).
Fox has bought The Raiding Party, a drama project from Breakout Kings creator Nick Santora about three brothers and their overbearing mother who carry on the successful family business of robbing banks.
Thriller writer Jeffrey Archer is on a roll. With a movie deal already in hand for some of his books, his 1999 novel The Eleventh Commandment is being developed as a TV series by Gale Anne Hurd. The story follows Connor Fitzgerald, a CIA assassin who battles his own boss and Russian military amibitions as he tries to save the world.
Melissa George is set to star in the BBC-Cinemax spy thriller series Nemesis, which was created by former X-Files executive producer Frank Spotnitz. George will play a skilled operative with an elite private intelligence firm who survives an attempt on her life that might have been orchestrated by members of her own team.
Fox has purchased a script (reminiscent of the former TV show Alias) that's a procedural thriller focused on the orphaned 17-year-old daughter of a CIA operative who is recruited to become an operative herself.
Sherlock Holmes mania continues in the movies and TV, not just in the U.S. and the U.K., but apparently also in Russia, with a new adaptation starring Igor Petrenko as Sherlock Homes and Andrey Panin as Dr. Watson.
Joshua Jackson, who stars as Peter of Fox's Fringe, has written three issues of a tie-in graphic novel for the series, which explores pivotal events that take place between the third and fourth seasons, as well as alternate scenarios.
PODCASTS/RADIO
Geoffrey Gray recounts the events of the infamous and unsolved D.B. Cooper plane hijacking in his new book, Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper, as he talks with Guy Raz, weekend host of All Things Considered.
In honor of his new book The Cut, author George Pelecanos offers NPR a playlist of songs that correspond with specific characters or scenes, or "are just cool in their own right."
GAMES
A video game based on the popular crime drama NCIS is coming in October, although the 3D version is apparently only going to be available in Europe and not the U.S. Game makers says users will be able to "investigate crime scenes as agents Ziva David and Tony DiNozzo, conduct forensics analyses as Abby Sciuto, perform victim autopsies as Ducky Mallard, interrogate and break suspects as special agent Gibbs, and use satellite tracking to apprehend bad guys on the run as special agent McGee."
Focus Home Interactive is creating a Sherlock Holmes game for the Nintendo 3DS titled "Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Frozen City," set during a mysterious London snowstorm so cold that even the Thames is starting to freeze.
Interesting post! I`ll send it to all my friends!
Posted by: Alexander | September 27, 2011 at 03:33 AM