MOVIES
Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson have joined the production team behind the upcoming Paramount crime drama When Corruption Was King.
Frank Baldwin is adapting the script for the film, based on the Robert
Cooley novel. It's about a southside Chicago lawyer who becomes the
mob's most trusted attorney until he turns state witness and brings the
organization down. No director, cast or production start date just yet.
The release date has been announced—March 9, 2012—for the Edgar Allan Poe film starring John Cusack as the author, a murder suspect who works with a Baltimore police inspector in order to clear his name and rescue his kidnapped fiancĂ©e.
Warner Bros looks to be the winner in a bidding war for Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses, about a man who goes on the lam with his daughter, his accomplice on a three-state crime spree. Matt Damon is also rumored to be working on this picture as its star and eyeing it as the vehicle for his potential feature directing debut.
David Boreanaz (Bones) and Walton Goggins (Justified) are set to star in the independent film Officer Down, written by John Chase. The two actors join already-signed Stephen Dorff, Dominic Purcell, Stephen Lang, James Woods and AnnaLynne McCord. The film centers on a doctor and security guard whose dreams at night consist of what the other person did during the day. They meet when the security guard murders his wife, is then hit by a car and brought into the doctor's emergency room.
TV
The 10th season premier of USA's Law & Order: Criminal Intent, featuring the return of stars Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erb, drew 5.1 million viewers (up 43 percent over last year), and fueled growing rumors the show may return for an 11th round after all. Show creator Dick Wolf said he hopes "enough fans will come out so the powers that be reconsider their decision."
Even as Danny Cohen, the new head of BBC One, says he wants to reduce the number of detective shows on the network, they seem to be doing just fine on both the BBC and ITV. The Shadow Line on BBC Two, a seven-part noir thriller starring Christopher Eccleston as a morally confused cocaine baron and Chiwetel Ejiofor as aloof Detective Jonah Gabriel, drew three million viewers for its debut. ITV's Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn as Det Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope, and Case Sensitive, with Olivia Williams as Det Superintendent Charlie Zailer, also both had impressive numbers.
And more wonderful news comes as novelist Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse (played on TV by the late John Thaw), is reportedly in advanced talks on a prequel that would "explore the hard-drinking, opera-mad detective's time as an Oxford undergraduate and chronicle his entry into the force." The leads are yet to be cast, but the new series is expected to air next year, marking the 25th anniversary of the first Inspector Morse episode.
It's time again for TV network upfront season, where the fall schedules are announced. So far, Lifetime has announced the new shows The Protector, a police procedural starring Sons of Anarchy's Ally Walker, and the cop drama Against The Wall, starring Rachael Carpani (NCIS: Los Angeles); and A&E added a miniseries based on the 1977 medical thriller Coma by Robin Cook. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)
Author Chris Ewan has signed a development deal to bring his Good Thief's Guide series of comic mystery novels, featuring the adventures of struggling crime writer and globetrotting thief-for-hire Charlie Howard, to television in the UK.
Jacqueline Bisset has signed on for a multi-episode arc on Rizzoli & Isles, playing Constance Isles, Maura's elegant adoptive mother. Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly is also going to make a guest appearance in an upcoming episode, appearing as himself and playing a potential murder suspect.
THEATER
Minnesota based playwright, Joseph Goodrich, has received permission from the Ellery Queen (Dannay/Lee) estate to write a screenplay based on the Queen novel Calamity Town! No producer has been lined up yet, and everything is still apparently quite preliminary.
The musical Curtains is currently being staged at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. Created by John Kander, Fred Ebb and Rupert Holmes (along with Peter Stone, who came up with the concept and the original book), Curtains is a murder mystery set backstage at a 1950s Broadway-bound musical. It debuted on Broadway in 2007, two and a half years after Ebb's death, and its star, David Hyde Pierce, won the Tony Award for best actor in a musical.
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