Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

As the Rap Sheet noted, there are talks in the works for a movie version of the 60s spy-TV show, Man From Uncle which featured Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin (although McCallum is probably better known to today's audiences as Ducky on NCIS). So far, screenwriter Max Borenstein and director David Dobkin are on board, but time will tell if the project actually makes it to the big screen.

After months of wrangling, Columbia Pictures bought the English-language movie rights to the Millennium trilogy by late crime fiction author Stieg Larsson. The same Swedish company that made the Swedish-language version will work with Columbia in adapting the new project.

TV

No doubt inspired by the success of NCIS: Los Angeles, the Law and Order franchise is also taking to the streets of the City of Angels. Blake Masters (Brotherhood) will join series creator Dick Wolf to write the 13 episodes ordered by NBC for the fall. Meanwhile, the other Law and Order shows are cranking right along, with the original set to be renewed for a record-breaking 21st season.

Media guru Tina Brown has joined producer Bill Haber in optioning one of Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan books, Strange City, for a TV series. "She's an inspired creation," Brown told Daily Variety. "It's amusing
and ingeniously plotted and very contemporary. It just cries to be a TV
show."

WEB/RADIO

The latest CrimeWAV features selections from the third edition of Gerald So's The Lineup, an anthology of crime poetry. The podcast includes readings of poems by James Sallis, Wallace Stroby, David S. Pointer,
David Hernandez, James M. McGowan, Henry Chang, Jackie Sheeler, Carrie
McGath, and Sarah Cortez

The 2010 winners of the Streamy Awards, given to the best web-only video projects, includes several nods for The Bannen Way, a series about Neal Bannen, "a womanizing, con man and small-time thief who wants to start his life over. All he has to do is pull off one more job to pay off his debts."

THEATER

The Agatha Christie BBC Murders, a production of four lost Agatha Christie radio plays which debuted at the 2009 International Mystery Writers' Festival in
Owensboro, Kentucky, will appear on tour leading up to the show's arrival on Broadway in spring 2011. Although originally conceived as radio plays, the theatrical staging using a combination of radio techniques and adds a full proscenium theatre stage,
blocking, costumes and sets.