Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Sundance always ends up with some interesting film news, including the fact that IFC Films picked up North American rights to Jim Mickle’s Cold in July, a neo-noir thriller based on the novel by Joe Lansdale. It stars Michael C. Hall as a man who kills a burglar who breaks into his Texas home, only to find that the man’s father, an ex-con (played by Sam Shepherd), is determined to have revenge. 

One of the featured trailers at the Sundance Film Festival last week was Anton Corbijn's A Most Wanted Man. The spy thriller stars Phillip Seymour-Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright, Grigoriy Dobrygin, and Willem Dafoe.

A trailer was released for David Grovic’s directorial debut, The Bag Man, which stars Robert De Niro and John Cusack "on opposite ends of the same slimy side of the road."


TELEVISION

NBC has decided not to move forward with the Murder, She Wrote reboot staring Octavia Spencer although the network won't rule out trying to find another way to "reimagine" the series.

Top film-maker Ridley Scott is developing a TV crime series dubbed as Glasgow's answer to The Sopranos, to be based on the Alex Morrow novels of Scots crime writer Denise Mina. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

TNT picked up the first and second seasons of Transporter to debut on the network in fall 2014. The initial run had a bumpy time on Cinemax, but TNT thought it did well enough for a go and hired X-Files veteran Frank Spotnitz as new showrunner. The series stars Chris Vance as a professional "transporter" who operates in a seedy underworld of dangerous criminals and desperate players.

Bentley Productions (the company behind Midsomer Murders), has optioned the rights to the debut crime novel Never Forget by Lisa Cutts, about a "straight-talking, ambitious young woman starting out on a police career."

The BBC picked up the third season of Swedish crime series Wallander. The show is an adaptation of Henning Mankell's best-selling detective novels featuring Krister Henriksson as a hard-drinking, depressed Nordic detective. In addition, the fourth three-episode season of the Beeb's own English-language version of the Wallander books is set to air on the network later this year.

ABC has just given pilot orders to the drama projects Forever and Exposed. Forever follows Doctor Henry Morgan, New York City’s star medical examiner, who happens to be immortal. Exposed, based on a Scandinavian format, centers on an investigative journalist who stops at nothing to uncover the truth including some questionable alliances.

ABC also picked up Agatha, a character-driven procedural about a former convict turned big city criminologist brought in to help local police crack a case—but the chief detective she's been hired to help is the estranged father she hasn't seen in fifteen years.

Fox picked up Dead Boss, based on the UK series of the same name, a comedic mystery about an overachiever wrongfully convicted of murdering her boss, who "has to rely on her train wreck of a sister to prove her innocence."

Sharon Stone was just announced as the star in TNT's action-drama pilot Agent X, written by The Bourne Identity's William Blake Herron. The show centers on America's first female Vice President (Stone), who learns the job comes with a top secret duty: protecting the Constitution in times of great crisis with the aid of her Chief Steward and a secret operative designated “Agent X.”

Richard Dormer, Christopher Eccleston, Michael Gambon, Sophie Grabol, Jessica Raine, and Oscar nominee Stanley Tucci are set to star in Fortitude, a 12-part series set in the Arctic Circle. Tucci and Dormer will play the town's sheriff and a detective who are trying to make sense of a mysterious murder.

Kara Killmer was cast as a lead in NBC's pilot Tin Man, a futuristic thriller drama that follows a robot (Patrick Heusinger), accused of the first-degree murder of his creator, and the female public defender forced to fight for his cause.

Stephen Fry has signed on to play Prime Minister Trevor Davies in the 24: Live Another Day reboot.

Omnimystery News reported that filming has begun on season eight of Foyle's War, to follow Foyle's battles in the dangerous world of espionage as a Senior Intelligence Officer for MI5.

Pedro Pascal (Graceland) has landed a recurring role on The Mentalist as FBI Special Agent Marcus Pike, a charming blue-collar cop with FBI smarts who is attracted to Lisbon and tries to sweep her off her feet.

Rashida Jones has signed on to star in Tribeca, TBS’s single-camera comedy pilot from Steve Carell, who created and wrote the show with his wife, Nancy. "Tribeca is a satirical look at a police procedural anchored by Angie Tribeca, an outspoken 10-year veteran of the LAPD’s elite RHCU (Really Heinous Crimes Unit)."