Sony has opted not to adapt the third installment, The Lost Symbol, of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon thriller series as the next movie in its franchise. Instead, star Tom Hanks and director Ron Howard will be reuniting for Brown's novel Inferno, set in Europe and inspired by Dante, author of the 14th century poem The Divine Comedy. They're aiming for a release date of December 2015.
Although CBS passed on the Beverly Hills Cop TV series spin-off, showrunner Shawn Ryan is working with Paramount to put the failed-pilot into development as a movie. There's no word on whether the pilot's stars Brandon T. Jackson and Christine Lahti will be a part of the film.
Lotus Entertainment and Davids Canton Production are teaming up for an adaptation of the psychological thriller Restart based on Matthew Klein's novel No Way Back (published this spring by Corvus). Brad Anderson (The Call, The Machinist) has signed to direct the film, which focuses on an ordinary man who discovers his entire life is being infiltrated and manipulated by a terrifying criminal network. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)
Vladimir Kulich (The Vikings) has joined the film reboot of the 1980s television series The Equalizer. Kulich will play a Russian oligarch who funds an international black market enterprise, in opposition to star Denzel Washington's former covert agent who hires himself out to those in need.
Here's your first look at Academy Award winning actor Sean Penn in the adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette's thriller novel The Prone Gunman (retitled The Gunman for the film). Penn plays Jim Terrier, an international operative forced to go on the run.
TELEVISION
The Emmy Award nominations announced last week include include nods for Outstanding Drama to Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Game Of Thrones, Homeland, House of Cards and Mad Men. There are several other crime drama-related nominations, but all of them are for cable networks (or Netflix) and none for broadcast networks. For the full listing, check out this listing from Cinemablend.
Imagine Entertainment (Ron Howard and Brian Grazer) and 20th Century Fox have picked up rights to Andrew Gross's No Way Back for a television series, according to a notice the author posted on his Facebook page.
The Sundance Channel has chosen the series The Red Road (f/k/a The Descendants) for its second original scripted series. The show is described as "a hard-hitting drama that revolves around Harold Jensen, a sheriff struggling to keep his family together while simultaneously policing two clashing communities: the small town where he grew up and the neighboring Ramapo Mountains, home of the Ramapo Mountain Indians."
As Omnimystery News reported, ABC has renewed its summer drama Rookie Blue for a fifth season. (ON also has a Telemystery Scoresheet to keep track of the status of your favorite shows.)
The CBS sci-fi thriller Person of Interest has promoted Amy Acker and Sarah Shahi to series regulars for Season 3, as was announced at a recent Comic-Con panel. Root plays a talented assassin and cyber-hacker for hire who is intent on setting the Machine free, while Shahi plays a fearless operative in a secret paramilitary organization that tracks and eliminates terrorists.
The musical episode of USA's comedy-detective series Psych, featuring Tony Award winner Barry Bostwick and Anthony Rapp, is scheduled to air in December. Playbill has a trailer.
Charlie Hunnam is in talks to star in Triple Nine, a cop drama that Anonymous Content is developing, and Christoph Waltz and Cate Blanchett are also in the running to join the cast. The thriller was written by Matt Cook and focuses on a group of thieves in L.A. who plan to kill a cop (a "Code 999" in police parlance) to divert attention from their own crime scene across town.
AMC released a trailer for its upcoming "film noir" series, Low Winter Sun, about two detectives (Mark Strong and Lennie James) who murder a dirty cop in their department.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
On CBS This Morning last week: Robert Kolker, author of Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery.
THEATER
The full cast was announced for the return of the Jonathan Church-helmed production of Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Performances in Chichester's Minerva Theatre in the UK begin August 15, before moving to the West End's Duchess Theatre. The play is set in Chicago in the 1930s, where the Great Depression is the perfect time for Arturo Ui and his mob of gangsters to run protection rackets for both workers and businesses.
GAMES
The makers of the original Police Quest video game hope to resurrect the police procedural adventure with Precinct via a Kickstarter project. The game will include puzzles and mysteries as well as planned action sequences like shootouts, car chases, and foot pursuits. The developers are hoping for a June 2014 release.
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