Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The first book in author Adrian Magson spy thriller franchise, Red Station (published this past June), may be headed to the big screen. Production company Benderspink optioned the rights to the story about MI5 agent Harry Tate, who takes the fall for a drug bust gone bad. When he's sent to an outpost in Georgia for washed up operatives, he becomes entangled in a plot involving a Russian invasion of England.

John Le Carre's two sons, Stephen and Simon Cornwell, have launched their own production company the Ink Factory. Their goal: to see more of their father's novels adapted to film. A Most Wanted Man, scripted by Andrew Bovell and directed by Anton Corbijn, starts shooting next spring. Others in the pipeline include Our Kind of Traitor and The Mission Song. As for the 79-year-old Le Carre, he is serving as an executive producer and consultant.

Mira Sorvino has been cast in a film based on The Class Project: How To Kill a Mother: The True Story of Canada's Infamous Bathtub Girls, written by Toronto Star reporter Bob Mitchell back in 2008. Sorvino will play the emotionally abusive mother of two girls who plot to knock off their mom and live off the life insurance payout.

The documentary The Man Nobody Knew was released to limited markets this past week. It's based on the life of William Colby, one of the more infamous Directors of the CIA, and was made by his son, son Carl Colby. It's "at once a probing history of the CIA, a personal memoir of a family living in clandestine shadows, and an inquiry into the hard costs of a nation's most cloaked actions."

Omnimystery posted a link to a trailer for the new film based on Janet Evanovich's books featuirng her Stephanie Plum character.

TV

NBC has acquired a project from Numb3rs creators Nicolas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton based on a Elmore Leonard short story from the collection When the Women Come Out to Dance. The project will revolve around a Colombian mail-order bride who moves to Miami and struggles to move on from her past.

Another NBC acquisition is an untitled cop drama project set in Shanghai, China, from writers Cyrus Voris and Ethan Reiff, centered on a pair of fugitive recovery agents working in the world's largest city.

Author Charlie Huston (The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death) is teaming up with the FX network for a project titled Furlough, a crime drama featuring a detective/prison storyline. Michael Dinner (The Wonder Years) is on board to direct the pilot.

Chris Carter, the creative force behind the X-Files, is hoping to return to TV with a new supernatural police thriller series. The female-lead mystery police show is called Unique, and Carter will serve as both writer and producer.

Barry Schindel (Law & Order, Castle, Criminal Minds) will write and executive produce Turner Loose, about disgraced Wall Street banker turned jailhouse lawyer Bobby Turner who seeks a chance at redemption working for the female prosecutor who locked him up.

TV's crime drama Castle about a crime writer who assists the police, and whose fictional author already has a  real novel series in print, is also publishing a graphic novel, available in stores at the end of September.

PODCASTS/RADIO

NPR's Morning Edition interviews Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy, which remains one of the signal narratives about life in the Mafia 25 years after its publication. Adapted by Pileggi and director Martin Scorsese into the 1990 film GoodFellas, it follows the rise and fall of true-life Brooklyn gangster Henry Hill who turned FBI informant after a drug arrest.

GAMES

I received a notice about a part game, part TV feature, namely an interactive mystery-web series that challenges the viewer to help the detectives find the missing person. Season one is airing Monday nights at 7:45 pm PST. You can also watch the series via BlipTV and YouTube. At the end of each episode, viewers have 72 hours to vote for where the detectives go next, who to interrogate or what evidence to follow. I foresee this type of project becoming more common online as TV and the web become ever more integrated.

The makers of the popular game L.A. Noire, until now only available on platforms like Playstation and X-Box, announced a release date for a PC version coming November 8th in the U.S. and November 11th in Europe.