Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) has joined the action thriller Drive, although his role has yet to be announced. The film is adapted from the James Sallis novel and will star Ryan Gosling as a Hollywood stunt driver, moonlighting as a getaway driver for thieves who's in a race against time when he learns someone has put a price on his head.

Frances McDormand, who is producing the big-screen adaptation of Laura Lippman's novel Every Secret Thing, has signed Diane Lane to star as a detective investigating the mysterious disappearance of several children.

TV

The FOX drama The Good Guys is bringing on a new yet-to-be-cast female character as a potentially recurring crime scene investigator. The producers plan to introduce romantic entanglements, which have taken a back seat to the procedural aspects of the buddy cops. RonReaco Lee, who appeared in three episodes as criminal informant Julius, will also be getting a larger role.

Serinda Swan (Smallville) has been cast in the upcoming A&E drama series Breakout Kings, playing Erica Reed, an expert at finding people who don't want to be found and then killing them. A&E ordered 13 episodes of the show after FOX passed on the procedural drama.

ABC is going to adapt the hit British series Spooks  (a/k/a MI-5), which follows the work of a group of MI5 officers based at the service's Thames House headquarters in highly secure offices known as The Grid. They haven't decided yet if the cast/characters will be American or British.

The character of  Soledad Nye will be played by Mercedes Masohn, as the cast in the pilot of HBO's All Signs of Death is pretty much complete. She joins co-star Ben Whishaw as Webster Filmore, a slacker who ends up working as a crime scene cleaner. Rounding out the cast are Ron Yuan, Jeremy Ray Valdez, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Kelsey Ford and Clayne Crawford. The show is based on Charlie Huston's novel The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, with Huston himself writing the screenplay.

The new BBC modern-day version of Sherlock Holmes is enough of a hit in the UK that it's coming back for a second season. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson, and pulled in over seven million viewers
for the season finale. 

AMC has picked up The Killing with a 13-episode order to debut sometime in 2011. It's set in Seattle and based on the popular Danish television series Forbrydelsen, telling the story of the murder of a young girl and the subsequent police investigation. Mireille Enos (Big Love) portrays the lead homicide detective who investigates the death of Rosie Larsen.

WEB/PODCASTING/RADIO

If you haven't been following NPR's Crime in the City series, you can check out the archived features on their web site. They've featured quite an outstanding array of some of the finest writers working in crime fiction, focusing on the cities where they set their books.

WHYY's Fresh Air program took a look at Scandinavian crime fiction, pointing out that Stieg Larsson is just the tip of the Nordic literary iceberg.

NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday spoke with Michael Capuzzo, author of The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases.