Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Director Lawrence Kasdan is teaming with author Harlan Coben for a film adaptation of Coben's latest thriller, Stay Close, reports Deadline. The novel, due in bookstores March 20, deals with a past crime returning to "devastate the lives of a photojournalist, a suburban mother with a hidden past, and a homicide detective obsessed with a series of unsolved disappearances."

George Clooney is looking to co-write, produce and star in an adaptation of the true-crime book 2009’s Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter. The book and film concern a group of museum curators and art scholars who donned uniforms to rescue thousands of art treasures as the Allies liberated Europe during World War II. (Hat tip to Art Info, which included the groan-inducing title: "Raiders of the Lost Art?")

Some Sundance news related to the annual festival: Filmmaker Chris Columbus' 1492 Pictures is partnering with ro*co productions to adapt documentary films into narrative dramas. For their first project, they've chosen to adapt Yoav Potash's documentary Crime After Crime, about two young attorneys trying to free a woman sentenced to life behind bars for her role in the murder of a man who abused her. Rodrigo Cortes also premiered his film Red Lights, a supernatural thriller that follows two investigators (Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver) of alleged supernatural phenomena who appear to meet their match in a blind healer named Simon Silver (Robert De Niro).

TV

Great news for fans of the BBC series Sherlock Holmes, set in contemporary London and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman: it's returning for a third season. Apparently CBS has decided to try and capitalize on the show's popularity by creating their own modern-day Holmes series, although this setting will be modern-day New York. This isn't stopping the BBC from threatening a lawsuit if the CBS show shares too many similarities with their series.

FX has chosen not to buy the pilot for the Powers TV series, based on the comic book with police homicide detectives Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim (Jason Patrick and Lucy Punch), who specialize in cases involving "powers," or superpowered individuals. FX is leaving the door open for the future, but will require a substantial rewrite.

CBS has ordered a pilot for Jerry Bruckheimer's potential Trooper series about a "sensible mother" who becomes a New York state trooper.

Former Law & Order: Criminal Intent actor Courtney B. Vance is joining ABC's crime drama Revenge, playing a high-powered defense attorney who will end up representing the not-yet-revealed prime suspect at the center of the show.

Warehouse 13—Syfy's paranormal series about two Secret Service working in a top-secret storage facility that houses every strange artifact and mysterious relic collected by the U.S. government—will see an expanded season next year, from 13 to 20 episodes.

Daniel Sunjata (Rescue Me) has joined the cast of the Jeff Eastin pilot from Fox TV studios, which follows four agents from varying law enforcement agencies (DEA, FBI, LAPD) who live together undercover in a "ganglord's mansion-turned-safe house" in Southern California.

THEATER

Kamala Sankaram's Miranda is described as a "steampunk murder-mystery chamber opera" that depicts the trial of three suspects accused of murdering young Miranda Wright. It's being produced at HERE Arts Center in New York. The plot has the trial broadcast on a reality TV show in an alternate history and features a small chamber ensemble whose musicians also serve as the cast, while the audience participates as the jury.

Comments

[Yvette]

Terrific and informative post. I'm especilly interested in the George Clooney project based on a book depicting the looted art treasures of WWII and their recovery. Though some were lost forever, a great many treasures were found by some very clever art historians and such.

This is a movie I will be very much looking forward to.

[BV Lawson]

Ole George is beginning to take on more interesting projects, now that's he getting more "mature" in his career. I agree, Yvette, that the art-theft plot does sound interesting!