Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Philip Seymour Hoffman's next directing effort was to be the Depression-era mystery thriller Ezekiel Moss, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams. Unfortunately, the actor was found dead yesterday in his NYC apartment from an apparent drug overdose. It's far to early to tell how this will affect the project, but that doesn't really matter right now - most importantly, our sincere condolences, and I'm sure those of all his fans, go to the actor's family and friends. He will be missed by many.

The production company Lumanity has optioned Dennis Lehane's short story "Consumers," about a colorful hitman who targets players in high finance, for a feature film adaptation. Writer-producer Robert Budreau will pen the script.

Omnimystery News reported that Nic Pizzolatto's Edgar Award-nominated thriller Galveston is to be adapted for film by Jean Doumanian Productions. Pizzolatto also created, wrote and executive produces HBO's new drama True Detective.

More films are on the way made based on Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q series, Copenhagen's cold case police unit. The Keeper of Lost Causes was the first film from the series. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

Benedict Cumberbatch has joined the cast of the thriller Blood Mountain. He'll play a private military contractor whose special forces team is ambushed and killed during a covert raid, forcing him to personally escort one of the world's most wanted terrorists over hostile terrain to bring him to justice. As Variety adds, "With a bounty at stake and insurgents and rival mercenaries hunting them, the two find themselves facing not only their enemies, but each other in their fight for survival."

Chris Pine has signed on to star in The Line, a gritty thriller from director David Gordon Green and Walking Dead writer-producer Sang Kyu Kim. Pine will play a patrol agent who unexpectedly becomes caretaker of a young orphan after run-in with a criminal cartel and has to battle foes on both sides of the law and the border.

Meanwhile, Pine's fellow Star Trek cast member, Zachary Quinto, is joining Rupert Friend in the cast of Fox International’s Hitman sequel, Agent 47.

Actor Robert Carlyle will make his directorial debut with the dark comedy-thriller The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, an adaption based on the popular series of novels by Douglas Lindsay. The project will star Caryle, Ray Winstone, Ewen Bremner and Emma Thompson in the tale of a Scottish barber who accidentally stumbles into the world of serial murder.

Fox International Productions picked up the spec script The Forger, about an ex-CIA forger who is living in Istanbul who must return to the world of espionage when his former agency handler turns up dead and a female Iranian intelligence agent needs to defect to the West.

A24 released the first trailer and poster for Denis Villeneuve’s psychological thriller Enemy, starring Jake Gyllenhaal (a very busy man these days) in dual roles as a man who sees his doppelgänger in a movie and begins to obsess over finding him. Also in the cast are Isabella Rossellini

TELEVISION

NBC has ordered two extra episodes for the freshman series Chicago P.D., a spin-off of the network's other successful show, Chicago Fire.

Bones fans, rejoice: Fox has renewed the series for a 10th season. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Likewise, fans of the Cinemax crime drama Banshee will be happy to hear that the show was renewed for a 3rd season.

Dianne Wiest is heading for The Blacklist in a guest-starring role playing the head of Amnesty United, an organization created to fight the death penalty.

CBS ordered a terrorism pilot from the producer of Revenge. The story concerns a retired CIA officer who’s pulled back into action after a terrorist attack hits Washington, D.C.

Fox bought the thriller script The Unseen, based on the short story "Mr. Pettinger’s Daemon," which appeared in thriller author John Connolly's collection, Nocturnes. The plot centers on a hospital cleric sent to treat a patient in a remote parish and discovers the root of the man's erratic behavior is a biblical force of evil trying to surface from deep below the church.

Director Michael Offer (Last Resort) has been hired to helm the ABC drama pilot, How To Get Away With Murder, a suspense-driven legal thriller about ambitious law students and their brilliant and mysterious criminal defense professor who are entangled in a murder plot. Matt McGorry (Orange Is The New Black) has also been added to the cast.

Deadline reported that Neil Marshall (The Descent) will direct NBC's drama pilot Constantine, about an enigmatic and irreverent con man-turned-reluctant supernatural detective, while ABC has hired director Charles McDougall for its pilot Secrets & Lies about a family man who finds the body of a young boy and quickly becomes the prime murder suspect.

Mike Colter has been cast in TNT's action-drama pilot Agent X, written by William Blake Herron and starring Sharon Stone as America’s first female Vice President who relies on her "secret weapon," Agent X (Jeff Hephner).  

Michael Pitt is joining Hannibal, playing Mason Verger, an unstable, wealthy patient of Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) who develops a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with the cannibal killer. NBC also teased several other snippets about the return of the show on February 28th, including the addition of Katharine Isabelle as Hannibal's twin sister who may end up being a romantic interest for Will Graham. Also returning to the show are guest stars Gillian Anderson, Eddie Izzard and Raul Esparza.

A&E released a poster and a trailer for its new crime drama Those Who Kill, based on a Danish series inspired by the bestselling crime novels of Elsebeth Egholm. The show follows a recently-promoted homicide detective who tracks down serial killers and seeks the truth behind the disappearance of her brother. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

BBC Radio 3 is planning a broadcast in May to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas's birth, but the work they've chosen isn't a typical Dylan Thomas subject. It's a script Thomas wrote with murder, mystery and intrigue in the South Pacific that was optioned at one time by actor Richard Burton but never developed into a film.

Ian Rankin joined host and fellow Scottman Craig Ferguson on the Late Show on CBS.

GAMES

Frogwares revealed more details about Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishment, a new adventure game heading to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 later this year.