Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Will Smith is in early talks to star in the adaptation of Markus Sakey's novel Brilliance. Smith would play a federal agent in a world where some people are born with extraordinary abilities ("the brilliants"), including a man Smith is hunting who wants to start a civil war.

It looks like Jack O’Connell will play the lead in the thriller Section 6 (based on a spec script written by Aaron Berg that the studio won in a bidding war). The story centers on the origins of MI6, the British intelligence agency founded during World War I.

The film adaptation of the '60s TV spy series The Man From Uncle has been given a 2015 release date. Directed by Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes), the project stars Armie Hammer and Henry Cavill as the spy duo.

Director Patrick Hughes has been tapped to helm an English-language Hollywood remake of The Raid: Redemption, with the Hemsworth brothers as potential stars. The original project centered on an Indonesian S.W.A.T. team storming a building where a violent gangster holds hostages, and the young cop who tries to rescue his drug-dealing brother from the chaos inside.

Warner Bros. is taking an unusual route for Rob Thomas' upcoming Veronica Mars movie, an adaptation of the popular TV series. The studio is going to make the film available to rent or buy online on March 14, which is the same day it opens in 270 theaters across the U.S.

Actor Edward Norton's Class 5 Films is teaming up with Brett Ratner and James Packer’s RatPac Entertainment for Norton's adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's novel Motherless Brooklyn. The story centers on Lionel Essrog, a Brooklyn private detective with Tourette’s syndrome, who teams up with three boys from his former orphanage to serve as agents for a notorious New York mobster. When the mobster is murdered, Lionel works to find his boss's killer.

The next Bond will film will probably have a different look: Roger Deakins, the award-winning cinematographer who was responsible for Skyfall, won't be returning for Bond 24.

Fox Studios released a trailer for the upcoming action/thriller film In the Blood, starring Gina Carano as a woman whose husband is mysteriously abducted while they are vacationing in the tropics and her efforts to find him.

TELEVISION

CBS is planning another CSI spin-off, this time focusing on cyber crime. Inspired by the work of real-life Irish cyberpsychologist Mary Aiken, the pilot follows Avery Ryan, Special Agent in Charge at the Cyber Crime Division of the FBI in Quantico, VA.

NBC has given a 13-episode series order for the crime drama Shades of Blue starring Jennifer Lopez as a single mother and detective recruited to work undercover for the FBI's anti-corruption task force. 

NBC crime dramas Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Chicago P.D. are teaming up for a two-hour crossover event on Wednesday, February 26.

Former House star Kal Penn has joined the cast of the CBS's series Battle Creek from Vince Gilligan and David Shore. The story follows a detective and an FBI agent with very different world views who are teamed up Battle Creek Michigan, and Penn will play a local detective who has reservations about the newly-arrived FBI agent.

Omnimystery News reported that Debra Messing has been cast as the lead in NBC's pilot The Mysteries of Laura.

Ioan Gruffudd (Fantstic Four) has signed on to star in ABC's drama pilot Forever, playing New York City’s star medical examiner with a secret: he is immortal. He'll be joined by Judd Hirsch, who will play Morgan's best friend Abe, who knows his secret.

Peter Dinklage is reportedly being eyed for the TV adaptation of the popular sci-fi fantasy series The Beasts of Valhalla, to play the central role of the "dwarf detective" in the adaptation.

Welsh actor Matt Ryan (Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior) is in talks to play the lead in NBC's drama pilot Constantine, based on the characters from the DC Comics John Constantine series. Ryan's character is "an enigmatic and irreverent con man-turned-reluctant supernatural detective who is thrust into the role of defending us against dark forces from beyond."

The European crime drama Crossing Lines is being added to Netflix, with the first season of the series is now available for steaming. The show stars William Fichtner (Prison Break) as a disgraced New York cop who moves to Europe to head up a justice league that hunts down serial killers. Donald Sutherland also headlines the cast.

The ABC crime drama pilot Agatha has added to its cast. Meta Golding (The Hunger Games) will play a tough DA who is also the title Criminologist's nemesis, while Jee Young Han will play a rookie cop assigned as Agatha's liaison.

Richard Cabral and Johnny Ortiz have joined John Ridley’s American Crime pilot for ABC Studios, which is about the racially charged crime of the home invasion and murder of a young war veteran and his beauty queen wife. Deadline also reported in the same article that Geoffrey Blake (Forrest Gump) has signed will have a role in TNT's pilot Agent X, starring Sharon Stone.

Nickelodeon has optioned author Chris Grabenstein's bestelling YA novel, Escape From Mr. Lemoncello’s Library. The story unfolds over one weekend in the world's "most fabulous" library where middle-school students are locked in as part of a competition and must use its technical resources to find their way out.

ABC Family cancelled the supernatural mystery thriller Ravenswood after one season. Unfortunately, the abrupt ending will leave fans of the show without resolution for the story line. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Award-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger (who also was behind Paradise Lost and a Whitey Bulger documentary) will direct and executive produce The System, an eight-part series on the criminal justice system, for Al-Jazeera America. Episodes will examine such subjects as false confessions, mandatory sentencing and the treatment of juvenile offenders.