Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Warner Bros. and Robert Downey Jr. are looking to adapting Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason franchise into a feature film, with Downey Jr. starring as Mason. They plan on keeping the early 1930s Los Angeles setting from the novels, which were also popularized in the 1960s TV show starring Raymond Burr.

Don Winslow penned a prequel to the classic Nicolai Hel spy novel Shibumi, which Warner Bros has acquired to develop as a star vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio. Winslow's novel, Satori, centers on an American raised as a highly-skilled assassin in Japan who gets involved with the CIA. 

Frankenstein, P.I:  Lionsgate is adapting the Darkstorm Studios graphic novel that re-imagines Mary Wollstonecraft's Gothic tale with the creature working as a private investigator and encountering other famous movie monsters. Aaron Eckhart, who also played a monster of sorts in The Dark Knight, has been signed to star.

It appears there may be another iteration of Zorro (after the 2005 pic starring Antonio Banderas). Sony Pictures says it's not a remake "but an origin tale of the comic book icon based on the 2005 Isabel Allende novel."

Writer-producer Michael Kerr is making his directorial debut with the new film Napa, based on a novel Fulbright scholar Hans Ostrom published through the small imprint Cliffhanger Press back in 1991. The project has signed Rose McGowan to star as Scarlett Harding, who gets a job as Sheriff in her hometown of Napa after returning from three military tours of Afghanistan. The rest of the plot is sketchy, but the author calls his story a mystery novel and Kerr calls it a romantic thriller.

Paramount has acquired an untitled project from screenwriter Billy Ray and JJ Abrams that is also light on details, but called "a mystery adventure." Ray is also currently working on the screenplay for a film adaptation of the TV series 24.

Here's your first trailer for the Edgar Allen Poe movie The Raven, starring John Cusack.

TV

Stefanie von Pfetten (Battlestar Galactica) will star in Cracked, the White Pines Pictures police procedural pilot for the CBC. She'll play Daniella, a psychologist in the Abnormal and Violent Crime Unit, and a partner to Aiden, a veteran sergeant played by David Sutcliffe.

Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters (Law & Order: SVU, Hawaii Five-0) have sold the pilot Notorious to CBS, a "character-based procedural" about a LAPD detective basking in the spotlight after solving a murder case that made national headlines.The pair also sold an untitled alien bounty hunter project to the CW Network.

USA Network has tapped White Collar creator Jeff Eastin for a pilot that follows agents from various federal and local agencies (DEA, FBI, LAPD) who all live at an undercover house in Southern California.

ABC has bought Secret Lives Of Husbands And Wives, an hourlong project from Jerry Bruckheimer Television. It's inspired by Josie Brown's 2010 novel described as a thriller/dramatic soap that centers on a murder and the secrets exposed in its aftermath.

Cinemax renewed Strike Back for a second season. The network's first primetime drama series is about a charismatic former U.S. Special Forces operative who joins a stealth British military unit to prevent an international terrorist attack. Don't expect favorite characters to be back for the second season, however, due to several deaths in the upcoming season finale and a possible change of storyline for next year.

The BBC has acquired two Danish/Swedish crime drama series The Bridge and Sebastian Bergman, which are "character-based, suspense-filled murder mysteries, with a cinematic atmosphere and style, following in footsteps of Spiral, Wallander and The Killing." (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

PODCASTS/RADIO

Max Allan Collins joins Reject Radio to talk about collaborating with the ghost of Mickey Spillane, hard crime, and different writing techniques.

Barry Eisler was featured on NPR's Morning Edition program, talking about his decision to walk away from legacy publishing and go indie at first, and then with Amazon afterward. He says, "If a better way comes along ... of course I'm going to take it," he says. "Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology."