Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

The Apple site posted a new movie trailer for the A-Team film prior to its upcoming release on June 11.  The movie is based on the TV series of the same name and stars Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley and Quinto "Rampage" Jackson as four men sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit, who survive in the Los Angeles underground as soldiers of fortune after their escape from a maximum-security stockade.

Oliver Stone is joining the production team for Deep Blue Good-Bye, the movie based on the series detective Travis McGee by John D. MacDonald. Stone will help develop the project and perhaps even direct. Leonardo DiCaprio has already been signed to play McGee in what Fox Studios hopes will become a franchise.

DiCaprio is also rumored to be in talks to star as J. Edgar Hoover in a biopic of the infamous FBI G-Man, with Clint Eastwood directing. Dustin Lance Black is writing the screenplay, which will cover Hoover's controversial career.

The cast of the murder mystery Fields just expanded with the addition of Jason Clarke. Production
begins later this month in Louisiana on the film, written by former DEA agent Donald F. Ferrarone, about a series of unsolved murders in industrial wastelands surrounding Gulf Coast refineries.

TV

One of the recently-announced Peabody awards goes to the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency on HBO (based on the series by Alexander McCall Smith), for the "groundbreaking series, shot on location in Botswana."

ITV is commissioning a two-part pilot based on the 2001 crime novel Aftermath by Peter Robinson (the 12th mystery in the series). Stephen Tompkinson has already been cast as the lead, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks.  

S. Epatha Merkerson is leaving the New York police procedural Law & Order at the end of this season, its record-tying 20th. The actress said, "It's a graceful way to go. It's the end of my contract this year, and the story line has been so perfect."
 
The end of Inspector Frost? The 70-year-old actor David Jason is leaving the role after 18 years and apparently the Inspector will go with him, although even Jason doesn't know how–the crew filmed three different versions of the ending so that news wouldn't leak out and spoil the denouement. The second of the two-part farewell airs next Sunday on ITV, and afterward, fans will be able to watch an alternative ending on ITV.com, with the third conclusion ending the DVD
release. Other crime fiction authors offered up their opinions for The Independent about whether they would consider killing off their protagonists.

TNT holds the key to whether or not Law and Order will be renewed for a record-breaking 21st season. The show has been slipping in the ratings and a money drain on NBC, but was able to offset some of those losses with TNT's licensing fees for showing reruns. TNT isn't sure it wants to continue airing the series, especially after the network took a $104 million write-off on losses stemming from the run of
another crime procedural, Without a Trace, which tanked on TNT after its original success on CBS.

WEB/RADIO

Norwegian author Jo Nesbo has been making the book tour rounds in the U.S. after the release of his novel The Devil's Star, translated into English. He gave an interview for Minnesota Public Radio and reads from the book, which you can listen to on the MPR site.

Elizabeth Foxwell over at the Bunburyist blog pointed out some interesting podcasts over at the Faber Books site, including an interview with P.D. James and conversations with Tobias Jones (Dark
Heart of Italy) and Nicola Upson (author of a series with Josephine Tey as detective).