Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Nick Nolte has joined Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone, Mireille Enos and Anthony Mackie in the cast for the drama Gangster Squad. Nolte will Bill Parker, a Purple Heart recipient and the new chief of police in Los Angeles, who is also the first chief not to be corrupted by Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn).

TV

CBS is bringing an adaptation of Leslie Glass’ April Woo police procedural series to the small screen. Screenwriter and novelist Amy Bloom, creator of the Lifetime series State of Mind, will write the script centered on the title character, a brilliant young Chinese-American who becomes the first female head of detectives in Coney Island, New York

The BBC psychological police drama Luther starring Idris Elba will be back for a third season, although U.S. fans won't get to see the second season until BBC American starts airing it in September.

The CW has signed a police procedural from Homicide team Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson. Titled Musketeers 3.0, the premise revolves around three highly intelligent, out-of-control New York detectives who meet their match when a rookie is assigned to work with them.

TNT may develop a pilot based on a script from Greg Plageman (NYPD Blue, Law & Order, Cold Case). The working title is Bishop to Pawn, and it is about a private eye who runs his business out of a Los Angeles pawn shop.

TNT has given the green light to several pilots for potential dramas, including H.I.K.E, in which a female police officer runs the Home Invasion Kidnapping Enforcement team in Phoenix, Arizona, and Perfect Set, about a brother and sister who solve crimes and is being dubbed a present-day Hart to Hart. (Hat tip to Ominmystery News.)

Busy-bee TNT also announced cast additions to a pair of projects in its Mystery Movie Night franchise, which will include six procedural dramas, based on novels. Anne Heche and Judd Hirsch have joined the cast of Silent Witness, adapted from Richard North Patterson's book, and William Devane and Titus Welliver have joined Catherine Bell in Good Morning, Killer, adapted by April Smith from her novel. 

ABC has bought a light drama pilot script from Jon Feldman, described as "Moonlighting meets Early Edition." It centers on a charming ex-con who realizes he's receiving video links to news reports by a beautiful, ambitious TV crime reporter (who helped put him away)--before she actually films them, giving the unlikely duo 24 hours to prevent the crimes from taking place.

NBC acquired the television rights to the Israeli television thriller Pillars of Smoke in hopes of making a U.S. version. The original series, titled Timrot Asham, is in its second season in which the police investigate a cult in the Golan Heights that has vanished and uncover a political conspiracy. It's described as a combination of Twin Peaks and Lost.

The Fox network has given the go-ahead to a pilot centered around Stockholm police officer Evert Backstrom (described as "a detective version of Dr. Gregory House"), the series character created by author/criminologist Leif G. W. Persson. Persson has written many TV episodes in his native Sweden, and will serve in an executive producer role for the U.S. series, as well.

Omnimystery News also notes that SVT, Sweden's television network, has some interesting crime dramas on their fall schedule, including ten 90-minute episodes adapted from crime novels by Arne Dahl (a pseudonym used by Jan Arnald).

PODCASTS/RADIO

NPR's Morning Edition continued its Crime in the City series, talking with author John Banville, who writes crime fiction under the name Benjamin Black, about how writing noir fiction set in Dublin in the 1950s is "absolutely perfect."