Top o'the week, and it's time for the latest roundup of crime drama news:
MOVIES
Adrien Brody is set to star in thriller Expiration, playing a former CIA agent gone rogue who finds himself "poisoned in a hospital bed attempting to perform one last job. With only one day left to live, he must find out who his murderer is and see the woman he loves one last time."
Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell will be joining the CHiPs movie from Warner Bros., which is also being directed by Bell's husband, Dax Shepard. Based on the 1990s TV series that followed two California Highway Patrol officers, the big-screen adaptation has Shepard and Michael Pena starring as the cops, with Adam Brody, Rosa Salazar, and Vincent D’Onofrio rounding out the cast.
Sixteen-year-old actress and Heroes Reborn star Danika Yarosh is closing in on a deal to play a lead role in Jack Reacher 2, which will star Tom Cruise and be directed by Ed Zwick (The Last Samurai).
Ato Essandoh (of the BBC's Copper) has joined the cast of the as-yet-untitled next installment of The Bourne Identity at Universal Pictures, in a role being kept under wraps. He joins Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel and Julia Stiles in the cast.
TELEVISION
Leonardo DiCaprio is developing a mafia drama for Showtime based on a script Ray Donovan scribe Brett Johnson. Accoding to Hollywood Reporter, the untitled drama "traces a decade-long relationship between an unstable mafia captain and a rogue federal agent, each violating the strict codes of their respective organizations. Set in 1980s Brooklyn, the potential series examines the corrosive power the Wall Street era had on both the mafia and the FBI."
Jason Statham is set to star in drama series Viva La Madness, based on the novel by J.J. Connolly. Statham will play a man stranded in the Caribbean itching for the criminal life he left behind - even though he’s still a wanted man back home - and soon joins forces with two charismatic London gangsters.
Mark Gordon, Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence and Lawrence’s longtime producing partner Erwin Stoff, are teaming up for two projects, including an adaptation of the just-released mystery novel House Of Thieves by Charles Belfoure. Set in 1886 New York, House of Thieves centers on a respectable architect who has to use his knowledge of high society mansions and museums to craft a robbery to pay back his son's gambling debts.
NBC has put in development a new take on the 1979 ABC mystery Hart to Hart, which starred Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as a husband-and-wife sleuthing duo. The reboot hails from producer Carol Mendelsohn and Sony TV and will center on a gay couple. The new Hart To Hart is described as "a modern and sexy retelling of the classic series that focuses on by-the-book attorney Jonathan Hart and free-spirited investigator Dan Hartman, who must balance the two sides of their life: action-packed crime-solving in the midst of newly found domesticity."
Meanwhile, Sony is aiming to reboot another 1970s series, Charlie’s Angels, with Elizabeth Banks in talks to produce and direct. The reboot would be the fourth incarnation of the franchise, which began with the original series starring Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith as a trio of female police officers whose careers were marginalized by institutional sexism. Hired by a reclusive millionaire, Charlie, only ever seen as a voice on the other end of a phone, the three work as private investigators, often with the assistance of Charlie’s assistant Bosley.
Spanish actor Juan Diego Botto (Bordertown) has snagged the male lead opposite Michelle Dockery in the TNT drama pilot Good Behavior, which is based on the Letty Dobesh books by Wayward Pines author Blake Crouch. Good Behavior tells the story of Letty (Dockery), a thief and a con artist whose life is always one wrong turn, one bad decision from implosion — which is exactly how she likes it. Botto will take on the role of Javier, the magnetic contract killer who crosses paths with Letty when she overhears his plans to kill a client’s wife and forms "a dangerous, seductive working arrangement" with Letty.
Showtime’s sequel to the 1990s series Twin Peaks has added Amanda Seyfried in "a major role," although details on her character are being kept under wraps.
New cast members were announced for Barry Levinson's The Wizard of Lies, the HBO Films project based on jailed con man Bernie Madoff. Nathan Darrow (House of Cards), Kathrine Narducci (Power), Steve Coulter (The Hunger Games) and Kristen Connolly (Zoo) join the cast led by Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.
FX released the first teaser trailer for American Crime Story, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as O.J. Simpson.
In a more unusual move, ABC released the first eight minutes of the new FBI-themed drama series, Quantico.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
NPR's Diane Rehm welcomed David Lagercrantz, author of The Girl in the Spider's Web, the continuation of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy.
In the latest Crime Cafe podcast, host Debbi Mack interviewed author A.J. Sidransky about the inspiration for his crime fiction novels and other writing.
The two most recent Speaking of Mysteries podcasts featured Matthew Guinn talking about his new novel, The Scribe, and also Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse discussing Sherlock Holmes and their new book featuring Mycroft Holmes.
The New Zealand Book Council's Booknotes podcast featured crime author Michael Robotham talking about why he chose to write crime novels, why he thinks crime fiction is so phenomenally successful, and more.
THEATER
The critically-acclaimed 2013 stage production Sherlock Holmes, based on the Conan Doyle stories as adapted by playwright Greg Kramer, is going on tour. Director Andrew Shaver is taking the production first to the The Ricardo Montalban Theatre in L.A. for six "tour preview" performances October 15-18, and then it will move on to Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
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