Here's this week's Media Murder for Monday roll call of crime drama news:
MOVIES
Broad Green Pictures acquired U.S. film rights to Brad Furman’s adaption of The Infiltrator, the true story of one of history’s largest and most elaborate stings in the 1980’s with undercover US Customs agent Robert Mazur (played by Bryan Cranston).
The adaptation of Paula Hawkins' novel The Girl on the Train has signed its director, Tate Taylor (The Help).
Paramount and Skydance have hired Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz to pen the screenplay for Jack Reacher 2, based on Lee Child's novel Never Go Back. Christopher McQuarrie will not be returning to direct the sequel, however, with Zwick stepping in for that role.
Mission Impossible 5 has yet to hit the theaters, but apparently installment #6 is already in the planning stages at Paramount. Tom Cruise, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and J.J. Abrams are returning to produce, with Don Granger and Matt Grimm set to serve as exec producers.
Mr. Holmes, the film based on the elderly version of Sherlock created in Mitch Cullen's novel, has run into a legal roadblock after the Conan Doyle estate sued the author and the producers for copyright and trademark infringement. However, given recent court battles the estate has lost, the legal challenges may not be enough to halt the movie's release.
Aaron Paul is in negotiations to join the cast of the dramedy Central Intelligence, which stars Kevin Hart as a boring accountant who reconnects with an old school chum (Dwayne Johnson) who has morphed from nerd to rogue spy. Paul will play Johnson's CIA partner.
Michael Nyqvist has joined the cast of I.T., the indie revenge thriller from Pierce Brosnan, who produces and stars, along with Stefanie Scott, James Frechville and Anna Friel. Brosnan plays a man who had it all until his I.T. consultant starts threatening his family, business, and his life.
T.R. Knight has joined the cast of the Hulu series 11/22/63. The drama is based on Stephen King’s novel of the same title and stars James Franco as an English teacher that time travels back to 1958 and tries to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
David Oyelowo (Selma) is set to co-star with Luke Evans (Furious 7, The Hobbit) in the upcoming big screen thriller Three Seconds, an adaptation of the bestselling Swedish novel by authors Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom. The plot centers on an undercover prison assignment that goes terribly wrong, with Evans playing the protagonist, an ex-con who poses as a prison inmate as part of an FBI operation, and Oyelowo playing an anti-social N.Y.P.D. detective who catches on to the FBI mission after a fellow officer is murdered.
Tony winner John Gallagher, Jr. will play a lead role in The Belko Experiment, the new thriller from The Guardians of the Galaxy writer and director James Gunn, about a group of American expats in South America who are caught up in a dangerous experiment on morality.
Lake Bell and Benjamin Bratt have joined the cast of the thriller Shot Caller, about a gangster who gets released from prison and is forced by the leaders of his gang to orchestrate a major crime with a brutal rival gang in Southern California.
TELEVISION
Tomorrow evening, the Hallmark Channel will broadcast Murder, She Baked: A Chocolate Chip Cookie Mystery adapted from the first in the popular series of mysteries by Joanne Fluke featuring baker Hannah Swensen.
Bruce Greenwood has been added to the A-list cast of the FX series American Crime Story: The People V OJ Simpson, playing Gil Garcetti, the Los Angeles district county prosecutor on the Simpson trial.
Viacom's premium network Epix is getting into scripted programming, including the espionage drama Berlin Station, written and executive produced by spy novelist Olen Steinhauer, with fellow exec producer and director Michael Roskam (The Drop) also on board. The plot centers on a new CIA case officer in Berlin, Daniel Meyer, who is on a secret mission to find who leaked information to a now-famous whistleblower, a quest that leads back to Washington.
An extended trailer and behind-the-scenes interviews with the cast was released ahead of the new season of Hannibal.
PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO
Mystery Writer John Sandford appeared on public radio station WABE to talk about his long-running book series featuring Minnesota cop Lucas Davenport.
On the latest Crime and Science Radio: "Investigating the Criminal Mind with Author Alan Jacobson."
To mark Arthur Conan Doyle's 156th birthday last week, Elizabeth Foxwell pointed out some 1930 sound files of Doyle speaking, via Centre for History and Analysis of Recorded Music, King's College London.
THEATER
Illionois' Marriott Theatre (outside Chicago) is currently staging the six-time Tony Award-winning musical City of Angels through August. The production is described as a "deliciously funny celebration of the decade's film noir genre and dark detective fiction, with a liberal touch of femme fatale."
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