Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

One of the world’s most famous crime novelists may be headed to the big screen once again: Agatha Christie, based on a script by Tom Shepherd, is in the works at Columbia Pictures. The action-adventure pic, which is being pitched as "Sherlock Holmes meets The Thomas Crown Affair," finds a young, adventurous Agatha Christie joining Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on a mission to track down the whereabouts of a missing oil tycoon.

In the first major deal closed at Cannes Film Festival, Sony Pictures Classics bought rights to Paul Verhoeven’s Elle. Penned by David Birke and based on Phillipe Djian’s novel Oh…, the psychological thriller stars Isabelle Huppert as a powerful, ruthless business woman who survives an assault in her home and takes it upon herself to track down her assailant.

In another Cannes deal, it was reported that Don Johnson will star opposite Nicolas Cage, Anna Hutchison, and Talitha Bateman in the vigilante thriller adapted from Joyce Carol Oates' award-winning novel, Vengeance: A Love Story. The project centers on the case of a mother brutally raped by four meth heads who hire one of the nation's top criminal defense lawyers (Johnson), spurring a detective to take matters into his hands in order to protect the lives of three generations of women.

Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is joining Greg Kinnear and Emma Roberts to star in the psychological thriller Spinning Man, which will mark the American debut of Danish filmmaker Peter Flinth. The project was adapted from George Harrar’s novel by Matthew Aldrich and centers on a philosophy professor (Coster-Waldau) who becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of a high school cheerleader. Kinnear will portray the detective assigned to the investigation and Roberts (Scream Queens) will play the professor's prized student.

The much-in-demand Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is also set to take the lead in the dark comedy Small Crimes, a story of a disgraced former cop who is fresh off a six-year prison sentence for attempted murder and returns home looking for redemption but winds up trapped in the mess he left behind. The project is based on Dave Zeltserman’s 2007 novel of the same title.

Adam Driver (Star Wars: the Force Awakens) has landed a lead role in Steven Soderbergh’s NASCAR heist film Logan Lucky, which centers on two brothers who attempt a crime during a NASCAR race. Seth MacFarlane is also in talks to join the project, joining Channing Tatum and Riley Keough (both from Soderbergh’s Magic Mike), who have also been tapped to join the cast.

Jennifer Lawrence is being eyed for a role opposite Sandra Bullock in the female-centric Ocean's 11 reboot. The story is a continuation of the successful George Clooney-led trilogy and centers around Bullock's character, who plays an ex-con and Danny Ocean’s sister. With a team of thieves, she sets out of steal a necklace from the Met Ball and frame a crooked gallery owner, with Lawrence playing Bullock's right-hand woman.

Kathryn Bigelow,  director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, is eyeing English actress Hannah Murray (Gilly on HBO’s Game of Thrones) for a key role in Bigelow's untitled true crime drama that will explore systemic racism in urban Detroit that led to riots.

Irish filmmaker John Moore (A Good Day to Die Hard, Behind Enemy Lines) is set to direct N.O.C., an action thriller that centers on the case of Alek, a deep-undercover CIA operative who discovers that a faction of the agency is collaborating with the terrorist cell he was sent to infiltrate. Stuck in a Berlin hospital and with the help of the EMT who saved his life, Alek must evade both the CIA and the terrorists if he wants to bring the evidence of the unsanctioned special op to the people he thinks he can trust.

Clive Owen has boarded Andorra, a romantic thriller based on Peter Cameron’s novel, with Owen starring  as Alexander Fox, a bookseller who leaves the U.S. after a personal tragedy to begin a new life abroad. The tiny eponymous country in which he finds himself is an idyllic escape, offering Fox the chance to reinvent himself until he becomes entangled with the ever-present locals as the mystery of his origin deepens. 

Sergei Bodrov will serve as executive producer and consultant on the English-language UK action-thriller Knuckledust. The whodunnit, in the process of casting, is set in a hyper realistic version of underground London and is described as "smart and gritty film that has the potential to become an iconic reference of the action-thriller genre."

IFC Midnight acquired North American and Latin American rights to I Am Not A Serial Killer, the Billy O’Brien-directed chiller based on Dan Wells' novel. Max Records, Christopher Lloyd, Laura Fraser and Karl Geary star in the pic, which takes place in a small Midwestern town where a troubled teen (Records) with homicidal tendencies must hunt down and destroy a supernatural killer while keeping his own inner demons at bay.

Dylan O'Brien is in talks to play Mitch Rapp in American Assassin, alongside Michael Keaton, in the project that's based on the Vince Flynn best-seller of the same name. The 10th of Flynn’s novels about Mitch Rapp, but the first chronologically, American Assassin has been eyed by Hollywood since it was first published. Seen as the launch of a possible franchise, Assassin will be directed by Michael Cuesta, whose most recent movie was the Jeremy Renner thriller Kill the Messenger.

XLrator Media and Benattar/Thomas Productions have kicked off production on their latest action-thriller, The Base, starring Cam Gigandet (The Magnificent Seven, Twilight) and directed by Jesse Gustafson. Gigandet will play the leader of a "Dirty Dozen" style band of military prisoners who have to fight off a terrorist attack on the remote prison in which they"re being held, which, unknown to them, is a cover for a secret drone control facility. 

A day after it was announced that Russell Crowe was in talks to star in an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, with James Franco already on board to direct and act in the film, news came that the project had to be scrapped due to rights issues. The project could still move forward if all the various parties involved are able to strike a deal. Blood Meridian follows the Glanton gang, a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred Native Americans and others for bounty and pleasure in the United States–Mexico borderlands from 1849 to 1850.

Tom Hanks reprises his role as Robert Langdon from previous Dan Brown thrillers in the new trailer for Inferno, where he"s tasked with thwarting the release of a virus that threatens to wipe out the human race.

TELEVISION

The networks announced their fall schedules this past week during the annual spring "upfront" season, with some surprises but also a lot of returning shows. For a full listing, check out TV Guide's assessment here. Network by network, the highlights regarding crime dramas include:

ABC: After much back-and-forthing, ABC decided to cancel Castle but renewed American Crime, How to Get Away with Murder, and Quantico. New series are set to include Conviction, in which the daughter of a former president is blackmailed into taking a job as the head of Los Angeles’ newly created Conviction Integrity Unit; and Designated Survivor (starring Kiefer Sutherland) that follows a lower-level U.S. Cabinet member suddenly appointed president after a catastrophic attack during the State of the Union kills everyone above him in the line of succession.

CBS:  As previously announced, CBS canceled CSI and Person of Interest, as well as Game of Silence and CSI: Cyber, the last spinoff from the forensic procedural drama that took television by storm 16 years ago. Returning shows include Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds, Elementary, Hawaii Five-0, and all three NCIS franchises. New series on the docket are reboots of the 1970s series MacGyver; Training Day starring Bill Paxton which picks up 15 years after the events of the original film) as a morally grey detective who gets partnered up with a young officer (Justin Cromwell); and Bull, a legal drama based on the early career of Dr. Phil, starring Michael Weatherly as he uses his psychology skills to analyze juries as a legal defense consultant. CBS also decided to pass on the Nancy Drew update series Drew, which would have placed the iconic teenage detective in an adult setting, although the producers plan on shopping the project to other networks.

Fox:  As previously announced, Fox is going ahead with the 24 prequel, 24 Legacy, and greenlighted additional seasons of Lucifer and Sleepy Hollow. Fox also picked up to series a small-screen adaptation of Lethal Weapon, which rides along with classic cop duo Riggs and Murtaugh as they work a crime-ridden beat in modern-day L.A.; and APB, in which billionaire Gideon Rerves (Justin Kirk) decides to put up millions of dollars of his own money to take over Chicago's out of control 13th Precinct and reboot it as a private police force with cutting-edge technology and revolutionary new ideas.

NBC: The peacock network renewed most of its crime dramas including The Blacklist, Blindspot, Chicago Fire, Chicago Chicago P.D., Grimm, Law & Order: SVU, and Shades of Blue. New shows include the latest "Chicago" spinoff, the legal drama Chicago Justice.

Another Alan Glynn novel could be heading to TV: the writer, whose book The Dark Fields inspired both the Limitless feature film and CBS drama, has sold the rights to his forthcoming work Paradime to ITV Studios America. Taking the lead on the project is Moonlighting and Medium creator Glenn Gordon Caron who will serve as the showrunner on the psychological thriller that follows a man's strange journey after a stint in Afghanistan when he finds his doppelganger in New York City.

Ole Sondegard of Good Company Films, the man behind both the British and Swedish version of Wallander and also the Millennium trilogy, is adapting the mystery novels of Jørn Lier Horst, a former Senior Investigating Officer at the Norwegian police force. The series will center on Horst's chief inspector William Wisting, his team, and the relationship with his daughter Line, a crime reporter for VG (Norwegian newspaper).

Unforgettable alum Dylan Walsh has booked a recurring role on Season 5 of Netflix's Longmire, playing Shane Muldoon, Eddie Heffernan’s criminal boss,

Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan) has signed on for a recurring role in Shooter, USA Network’s upcoming drama series based on Stephen Hunter’s novel Point Of Impact and the 2007 Paramount film starring Mark Wahlberg. It stars Ryan Phillippe as Bob Lee Swagger, an expert marksman living in exile who is coaxed back into action after learning of a plot to kill the president.

A new trailer was released for season 4 of Orange is the New Black on Netflix.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Suspense Radio had not one or two, but four authors on its latest two-podcast, including Steve Martini, Allan Topol, John Hegenberger and TR Ragan, each of whom showcased their unique writing style.

Authors on the Air interviewed Jane Tesh, a retired media specialist who's written four previous mystery novels featuring ex-beauty queen turned private eye Madeline Maclin and her reformed con-man husband Jerry, as well as three novels in the Grace Street Mysteries series.

THEATER

Jude Law will star in Obsession, a new play based on the 1943 Luchino Visconti film, at the Barbican Center in London in 2017. The film Obsession was itself an adaptation of James M. Cain's 1930s crime novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, which is about a man and woman who are having an affair and plot to murder the woman’s husband.

The Baker Street Players will present the world premiere of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's play Sherlock Holmes and the Case of The American Twins on Fridays and Saturdays between May 20th and June 11th in Jackson, California. The play is a traditional Sherlockian adventure that begins at 221B Baker Street where a distressed female client consults with Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson on the whereabouts of her twin brother.  What follows is a trail that leads to Mycroft Holmes and on to Colonel Collins (retired intelligence officer from the Army) who sends Sherlock to Madam Flora Yao (a provocative connoisseur of information), culminating in the climactic denouement in Mrs. Hudson's sitting room.