Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

DreamWorks is tapping director Scott Waugh for an untitled film said to be an international heist project involving a man who needs to pull of a seemingly impossible job and recruits his "off the rails" brother.

Via Omnimystery News: Crime author Jason Statham is set to star in a new film adaptation of the book Viva La Madness by J. J. Connolly, with Connolly writing the adapted screenplay. The main character in the film was first portrayed by Daniel Craig in the 2004 film Layer Cake.

Bill Kennedy is in negotiations to write the script for the snowbound thriller Cyberstorm, based on Matthew Mather’s self-published e-book. The story centers on an average New York family trying to survive as society comes crashing down both online and off, and New York is cut off from the rest of the world.

2013's White House action thriller Olympus Has Fallen is getting a sequel. Stars Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett and Radha Mitchell all return, although the plot moves to London, where the President, his trusted Secret Service bodyguard, and an English MI6 agent are the only ones who can stop a plot to take down London during the Prime Minister's funeral.  

The British/American writing team of Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani have sold the thriller script From Here To Albion to Participant Media. Set in a coastal English town, the story follows the aftermath of a tragic accident and the malevolent stranger seeking revenge on the perpetrators and the detective who covered it up.

Tony Winner Ellen Barkin, Jim Parsons and Isla Fisher are in talks for the thriller Visions, which centers on a pregnant woman who joins her husband at his vineyard home and begins to have "unsettling visions."

A trailer was released for the upcoming American Hustle, starring Christian Bale as a con artist and Bradley Cooper as an FBI agent who go head-to-head in the crime drama, based on the FBI ABSCAM operation of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Mission Impossible: 5 has been given a Christmas 2015 release date.

TELEVISION

The co-creators of Homeland and Heroes are bringing an action adventure event series to USA Network. The six-episode miniseries Dig centers on an FBI agent stationed in Jerusalem who uncovers a conspiracy 2000 years in the making that threatens to change the course of history.

Netflix announced it ordered a fourth and final season of the drama The Killing. AMC has canceled the show twice, and Netflix will pick up six episodes to officially wrap up the direction of the show.

Paramount Television is adapting the 1990 film Ghost for a series. Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner will co-write the pilot script (based on the original screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin, which won an Academy Award). The plot follows the ghost of a murdered man whose spirit doesn't die and teams up with a pyshic to avenge his death and offer closure for his fiancée. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

The CBS procedural The Mentalist promoted actress Emily Swallow to a series regular. She makes her debut in the December 1st episode as Kim Fischer, a mysterious woman who will have an influence on Jane's life. Other cast changes include the exits of Amanda Righetti and Owain Yeoman, with Rockmond Dunbar, who will play FBI Supervisory Agent Dennis Abbott, becoming a regular on the show.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Bestselling author Patricia Cornwell joined WTVR to talk about her Kay Scarpetta series.

NPR's Diane Rehm Show welcomed John Grisham to discuss his latest legal thriller, Sycamore Row.

Coming up this weekend on Suspense Radio, November 23rd:  Kevin Finn, Susan Sloate and Beth Groundwater. On November 24th: Lesley Diehl. On Crime & Science Radio, Jan Burke interviews Cat Warren.

THEATER

The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles is currently staging a production of Play Dead, written by Todd Robbins and the magician Teller (of "Penn & Teller" fame). Teller also directs Robbins in the play, described as "a mesmerizing and terrorizing look at life, death and the horrific wonder between. Weaving together storytelling, illusion and telepathy proves that there is nothing more arousing than unholy resurrection and we're never so alive as when we’re scared to death."