Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Black List writer Stephany Folsom has been hired to adapt Harlan Coben's novel Missing You for Warner Brothers, with Brett Ratner producing. The story follows a female police detective who encounters a former flame on a dating website, which leads to the discovery of an intricate scheme involving a brilliant sociopathic criminal.

Andy Goddard is set to direct an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel The Blunderer, about a 1960s architect leading a charmed and perfect life. That is, until his fascination with an unsolved murder leads him into a spiral of chaos as he is forced to play cat-and-mouse with a clever killer and an over-ambitious detective. The film stars Patrick Wilson, Jessica Biel, and Imogen Poot.

Frank Langella is joining the romantic thriller The Driftless Area, about a bartender and a mysterious woman whose relationship is threatened after the bartender gets mixed up with a dangerous crook and his bag of stolen cash. Langella joins Anton Yelchin, Zooey Deschanel, John Hawkes, Ciaran Hinds and Alia Shawkat who've already signed on to the project.

Channing Tatum's production company and partners are taking on an undercover crime thiller based on a true story. The untitled project will star Tatum as an average family man who risks everything to go undercover and topple 1970s America's most dangerous mob boss. 

Open Road Films acquired U.S. rights to the Sean Penn action thriller The Gunman, based on Jean-Patrick Manchette's novel The Prone Gunman. Penn stars as a former special forces soldier and military contractor with PTSD who wants to reconnect with his longtime love, but first must go on the run across Europe to clear his name.

A new trailer was released for the upcoming action thriller Rage, starring Nicolas Cage and Danny Glover in a story that centers on a businessman whose teenage daughter is kidnapped by masked thugs one night.

TELEVISION

Fans of the crime drama Law & Order: SVU and Mariska Hargitay can breathe easier. After questions as to whether or not the long-running show would return, NBC renewed the series for a 16th season, with Hargitay reprising her role as Detective Olivia Benson.

NBC also announced the rest of its fall 2014 schedule, to include several new shows: a Katherine Heigl-fronted drama State of Affairs, the freshman spy thriller Allegiance, and The Mysteries of Laura, which stars Debra Messing; as well as returning shows The Blacklist, Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, and Grimm.

CBS picked up the NCIS spinoff, NCIS: New Orleans, starring Scott Bakula, and the CSI spinoff, CSI: Cyber, starring Patricia Arquette. Other new shows include the police procedural Battle Creek starring Josh Duhamel and Kal Penn; the super-geek-hero series Scorpion, and the psychological thriller Stalker. The network also renewed The Mentalist at the last minute, though rookie shows Hostages and Intelligence were schedule casualties.

ABC greenlighted Secrets and Lies, based on an upcoming Australian series, which centers on a father (Ryan Phillippe) who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a young boy when he finds the body. Other new ABC shows include How to Get Away With Murder, American Crime, and Marvel's Agent Carter. And to no one's surprise, Castle was also renewed.

If you'd like to see the status of new and renewed and canceled series on the major networks, Omnimystery News is keeping a running summary and updates.

TNT's upfront announcement includes a series order for a supernatural medical drama from The Closer's Kyra Sedgewick and the 1960s-set cop drama Public Morals, which has Steven Spielberg as an executive producer.

TBS gave the go-ahead to the character-driven, police comedy Angie Tribeca, a satirical look at police procedurals from Steve and Nancy Carell.

PBS Masterpiece Mysteries this summer includes two new Hercule Poirot dramas July 27 and August 3. PBS also announced its fall mystery lineup, featuring British actress Julia McKenzie (Cranford) returning as spinster sleuth Miss Marple in three new episodes in September; Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox return for a seventh season of the Inspector Lewis; as well as Death Comes to Pemberley, Worricker: Turks & Caicos, and Worricker: Salting the Battlefield.

BBC Films announced several projects in the pipeline, including: City of Tiny Lights (based on a Patrick Neate novel), starring Riz Ahmed as a cynical London private eye; and London Road, starring Olivia Colman and Tom Hardy, which documents the real-life events of 2006, when the quiet rural town of Ipswich was shattered by the discovery of the bodies of five women.

As Deadline notes, having one network pass on a series is no longer the kiss of death. Several "leftover" shows have been picked up recently, including the Russian spy drama Allegiance, based on Keshet’s Israeli series The Gordin Cell, to air on NBC. Meanwhile, Fox gave a a 13-epsiode order for last season’s drama pilot Backstrom after CBS passed on it. The show is based on Leif G.W. Persson's books about an offensive, irascible detective in Portland's Serious Crimes Unit.

AMC has begun filiming in the UK on Knifeman, inspired by Wendy Moore's biography of John Hunter, an 18th century charming but arrogant surgeon (Tim Roth) who robs graves and harvests organs.

The Breaking Bad prequel, Better Call Saul added three more actors to the cast: Patrick Fabian (Veronica Mars), Rhea Seehorn (Franklin & Bash), and Michael Mando (Orphan Black).

USA has given a cast-contingent pilot order to the drama Stanistan from writer Andy Parker. The project "follows the staff at the American compound in the Middle Eastern country of Stanistan, where State Department workers, covert CIA officers and journalists operate in a delicate balance of danger and silliness using every coping mechanism available."

Sheldon Turner is teaming up with author Walter Kirn again, afterTurner's adaptation (with Jason Reitma) of Kirn's novel Up in the Air was nominated for an Oscar. This time, the project is Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder. The limited series from Sony Pictures TV centers on the 10-year friendship between Kirn and German con artist Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who went by the name Clark Rockefeller.

Teen star Zendaya Coleman is returning to the Disney Channel to headline the new series Shake It Up, playing a teenage super-spy in training.

Omnimystery News reported that Acorn TV added 10 new programs to its streaming line-up, including: the exclusive US debut of Midsomer Murders with Neil Dudgeon as Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby and Jason Hughes as his earnest, efficient protégé, Detective Sergeant Ben Jones;  and an adaptation of Wilkie Collins's Victorian mystery The Woman in White.

THEATER

The New York Philharmonic's recent staged production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street will be telecast in the U.S. on PBS' Live From Lincoln Center Sept. 26. The stellar cast featured Emma Thompson, Bryn Terfel, and Audra McDonald.