Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Writer-director Ryan Craig has been hired by Warner Brothers to adapt the Brad Thor novel Takedown, the fifth book in the series that centers on Scot Harvath, a former member of Navy SEAL Team 6 who becomes a black-ops counterterrorism agent.

Gold Circle Films is crafting an American remake of Taiwanese supernatural thriller Silk, about scientists who capture the ghost of a child in an apartment and the detective charged with discovering clues to the ghost's identity and demise. It's described as "Michael Crichton meets The Sixth Sense."

The Muppets have a little fun with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

TV

Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins books may be coming to NBC. John Wells' production company sold the project to be based on Mosley's black private eye Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, who finds himself solving crimes and dealing with the changing world around him in Los Angeles from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Producer/writer Greg Walker (Without a Trace, Defenders) has sold Red on Red to CBS, a crime drama based on the book by Edward Conlon. It centers on a young hungry detective who is asked to inform on his new partner who is a legend in the NYPD. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Author Marcus Sakey is writing and hosting a new Travel Channel series called Hidden City that Sakey describes as "Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations meets Castle." He'll travel to a different city in each of the 12 episodes to uncover its criminal past.

Ethan Hawke and Vince D'Onofrio are joining with writer-producer Chris Brancato for a cop drama pilot for NBC. Titled Blue Tilt, the show follows Hawke and D’Onofrio as two seasoned homicide detectives as they solve cases while dealing with their wives/ex-wives and kids. The title Blue Tilt refers to a cop term for homicide detectives put under psychiatric observation if they may become a danger to themselves.

Nothing succeeds like success. Fresh on the heels of the popular Sherlock Holmes movie version (with Robert Downey, Jr.) and BBC TV series (with Benedict Cumbersnatch), CBS is eyeing a Sherlock reboot. It's described as a "modern take" on the cases of the pipe-smoking private eye created by Arthur Conan Doyle. (In other words, an American version of the BBC show.)

CBS also acquired a project based on a character in the "Mommy Track" series of mysteries by Ayelet Waldman featuring Juliet Applebaum, who has given up her career as a public defender to stay home with her daughter Ruby.

ABC has purchased not one but two pilots based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the classic tale by Robert Louis Stevenson. I already mentioned one, about an ER doctor whose "id manifests itself as a different person when he goes to sleep as a result of an experiential medical treatment." The latest is described as a "suspenseful, darkly romantic retelling of the classic tale with a unique sci-fi twist."  Set in modern San Francisco, it involves a female criminal psychologist drawn into the mysterious world of a brilliant inhibited scientist and his volatile alter ego.

ABC Family has ordered a pilot project titled Intercept, which follows a group of college students who get roped into solving crimes when one of them creates a high-tech gadget that intercepts conversations.

Hannibal Lecter may be coming to your living room—in a TV series. French film studio Gaumont, who is setting up Gaumont International Television, a production company based in Los Angeles, hopes to sell their series project that will "center on Lecter’s early days, namely his time going head-to-head with FBI agent Will Graham."

THEATER

Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia, is currently presenting The Boy Detective Fails, a world premiere musical based on the book by Joe Meno with music and lyrics by Adam Gwon. It's both a send-up of anachronistic boys detective fiction and a tale of adult survivors' grief when childhood mysteries turn into very-real grownup ones.

There are two staged musical versions of Bonnie & Clyde in the pipeline. The first begins previews on November 4, with the world premiere on December 1st at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in NY. The second is a satiric take of the lives of America's infamous bank robbers, scheduled for March 15-April 8, 2012 at the urora Theatre in suburban Atlanta.

Greensboro, North Carolina's Triad Stage will feature Dial "M" for Murder this fall season. Frederick Knott's play was made famous by Alfred Hitchcock's filmed version. The play is set in 1950s London and revolves around Tony and Margot Wendice, when Tony learns of Margot's infidelity and devises the perfect plot to kill his wife and gain access to h
er wealth. But things don't go as planned, and Tony has to stay ahead of a detective and mystery writer determined to solve the crime.