Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Luke Hemsworth, older brother of Chris and Liam, has nabbed his first lead role in a feature film. He'll co-star with Jonathan LaPaglia in The Reckoning, a film about a cop's search for two teenagers who shot video footage of a murder.  The project is due to begin shooting April 29 in Australia.

Charlize Theron's Denver and Delilah production company and producer Ian Bryce are behind a mysterious new crime thriller at Paramount. The unnamed project is being written by Dan Nowak, who has scripted several episodes of the crime-drama series The Killing.

Production company Nasser Group North is preparing a film version of The Virginian, about an enforcer for a cattle baron in Wyoming, preparing to stay closer to the original Owen Wister novel from 1902 than the 1960s TV series.

Twentieth Century Fox beat out Universal in acquiring worldwide distribution rights to Matthew Vaughns film The Secret Service, based on a graphic novel by Mark Millar. The project centers on a veteran secret agent who trains a young protege into the business. 

Brady Corbet (star of the upcoming film Simon Killer) has joined actors Benicio Del Toro and Josh Hutcherson in Paradise Lost, a dramatization of the life of notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

The James Bond producers confirmed talks are ongoing with Sam Mendes (the director of Skyfall) and that they are confident in his return. According to Barbara Broccoli, "We will get him back... Maybe not for the next one… but we will get him back again."

Dermot Mulroney has been added as a co-star in Careful What You Wish For, the thriller directed by Elizabeth Allen. Mulroney will play an investment banker whose wife is having an affair; when Mulroney’s character dies and a hefty life insurance policy is reveled, everyone becomes a suspect.

Rock Paper Scissors has bought the rights to the Robert Goolrich novel Heading Out to Wonderful, to be directed by Angus Wall. It's set in the summer of 1948 when a handsome, charismatic stranger returns from the war to a sleepy village in the Valley of Virginia with two suitcases, one full of a fine set of butcher knives, the other full of money. 

The star-studded cast of David O. Russell's next film, an untitled Abscam project, has added another star to the firmament. Boardwalk Empire starJack Huston is joining Christian Bale, Jeremy Renner, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, and Bradley Cooper for the project, based on the true story of how a con artist and his partner/mistress help an ambitious FBI agent con a group crooks.

Although this sounds more horror/sci-fi than crime, it has a fun premise for author-types:  Dimension Films picked up Zak Olkewicz's spec script Ink and Bone, which follows an editor dispatched to help a reclusive horror writer finish his latest book, only to discover he's being held prisoner in his house by everything he's ever written.

Universal released a trailer for its upcoming action thriller 2 Guns, starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as two undercover federal operatives from competing bureaus forced on the run together.

TV

America's Most Wanted has been cancelled, again; after being with the Fox network from 1988 to 2011 and helping law enforcement capture 1,202 fugitives worldwide, the network ended the show, but Lifetime picked it up. Now, Lifetime is cancelling the series, after 44 episodes resulting in 36 captures. Lifetime hasn't ended its partnership with host/producer John Walsh, however, and is developing a pilot, tentatively titled John Walsh Investigates, taking a different approach to Walsh's ongoing crime fighting and victims' advocacy work.

Omnimystery News reported that Martin Scorsese and Miramax are teaming up to develop a television series based on the 2002 crime film Gangs of New York, although no details regarding a network or pilot schedule was released.

NBC is apparently so pleased with Chicago Fire's hot ratings, they're considering a spin-off, but instead of featuring firefighters, it would focus on police officers in Chicago.

Burn Notice is adding Adrian Pasdar (Heroes) for a recurring role in a multi-episode arc, playing a charismastic yet unpredictable former special ops soldier now suspected of running a freelance terrorist ring.

ITV has begun filming the third and final episode, "Endless Night," of the upcoming sixth season of their Miss Marple series starring Julia McKenzie as the popular Agatha Christie sleuth. The other episodes already in the can are "A Caribbean Mystery", adapted from a Miss Marple novel, and "Greenshaw's Folly", based on a Christie short story.

Sherlock producer Steven Moffat has teased that one of the key words for the upcoming third season of the series is "wedding," and we may have more indications of why: the BBC has added British TV veteran Amanda Abbington to the cast in an unidentified recurring role, although it's said to have a "significant impact" on the lives of Sherlock and Watson - and Abbington also happens to be Freeman's longtime real-life partner. Coincidence?

The Ironside remake has added Kenneth Choi (Sons Of Anarchy, Glee, 24) to the cast, playing Captain Ed Rollins, Ironside's supervisor. Blair Underwood was already signed up in the title role of the tough, acerbic police detective relegated to a wheelchair after a shooting.

Season 3 of The Killing just got its premiere date: AMC announced the show will be back this summer on Sunday, June 2. BBC America also announced that the second season of Copper, about an Irish-American cop who seeks justice for the powerless in the notorious Five Points area of New York in 1965, will premiere June 23.

ReelzChannel has acquired U.S. broadcast rights for the Canadian crime drama Cracked. The series stars David Sutcliffe as Detective Aidan Black, a seasoned officer dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, and Stefanie von Pfetten as psychiatrist Dr. Daniella Ridley, who leaves her prominent position at a downtown hospital to partner with the police in the newly formed Psych Crimes Unit. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

FX annouunced that Justified will be getting a fifth season. The network also picked up a small-screen adaption of Fargo, based on the Coen Brothers film, as its first limited-run series. Also under development are the movie/limited-run projects Grand Hotel, about an international luxury hotel that becomes the center of a terrorist attack; Mad Dogs, about a deadly reunion in Belize; and Sutton, based on the novel by J.R. Moeringher, based on the most prolific bank robber in American history.

The fall TV schedules are beginning to firm up, with CBS announcing 14 returning shows. Not included on that listing are the veteran drama Criminal Minds and bubble shows CSI: NY, Vegas, Golden Boy or Rules of Engagement.

Fox released a trailer for Axe Cop, one of the four quarter-hour series that will launch Fox's late-night alternative animated programming block Animation Domination High-Def, (premiering July 27). The show is based on the web comic of the same name, created by five-year-old Malachai Nicolle, who did the writing, and his 29-year-old brother, Ethan, who drew it, about the adventures of "an axe-wielding police officer and his loyal team of allies as they fight bad guys."

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Peter Andreas, author of Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, visited NPR's Diane Rehm Show.

Beth Rudetsky joined It Matters Radio to talk about combining her music background and passion for reading crime-fiction novels to create a new niche where she composes and sings original songs for author's novels. Her first venture was with UK author Zoe Sharp.

Thriller writer Owen Laukkanen chatted with Minnesota Public Radio about the criminal underground of Minnesota in his second book, Criminal Enterprise.

THEATER

Rupert Holmes' A Time to Kill, based on the novel by John Grisham, is hoping for an October opening on Broadway. The play, about a man who takes the law into his hands following a crime against his daughter, had its world premiere in May 2011 at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Ethan McSweeny directed that version and will also helm the Broadway production.

Comments

[Paul D. Brazill]

I wonder if the Mad Dogs that you mention is the British series from a couple of years ago. Or maybe a remake?