Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Hugo Weaving, Aaron Pedersen and True Blood actor Ryan Kwanten have been cast in the Australian thriller Mystery Road, written and directed by Ivan Sen. The film is set in an Outback town and follows an indigenous detective who returns home to solve the murder of a teenage girl.

The Sundance Channel and BBC are teaming up to co-produce a made-for-television adaptation of William Boyd's bestselling spy thriller Restless. Boyd wrote the screenplay for the two-part miniseries, which will be directed by Edward Hall. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

CinemaBlend posted a trailer for Richard Gere's star turn in the contemporary thriller Arbitrage that was a hit at the Sundance Festival. Gere plays Robert Miller, a crooked hedge fund magnate who must ally himself with an unlikely partner to save his skin.

True Blood star Stephen Moyer is joining the cast to play prosecutor John Fogelman in Devil's Knot, the feature film about the real-life West Memphis Three. Also recently signed is CSI Miami star Rex Linn, taking on the role of Chief Inspector Gary Gitchell, who led the investigation.

Tommy Lee Jones is apparently going to be joining Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer in Luc Besson's dramedy mob film Malavita. De Niro and Pfeiffer will play the heads of the Manzoni mafia family who enter into a witness protection program in Normandy, while Jones will play a stern FBI agent assigned as the Manzonis' handler to help them adjust to their new lives.

Several studios are circling around Tom Clancy's video game Splinter Cell, which revolves around covert operative Sam Fisher. The six installments of the game have sold 22 million units and spawned several novels.

Dylan McDermott has signed on to the political thriller Olympus Has Fallen about a takeover of the White House (described as "Die Hard in the White House"). The former star of American Horror Story, Dark Blue and The Practice will play a Secret Service agent and joins Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart in the cast.

Here's a trailer to tide you over until the upcoming release of the film Alex Cross, based on James Patterson's homicide detective from his bestselling novels.

TV

The summer crime dramas are doing well. ABC renewed its summer drama Rookie Blue, starring Missy Peregrym and Gregory Smith, for a fourth-season next year. The series follows a group of five rookie cops as they navigate life on the beat. Meanwhile, A&E renewed freshman series Longmire, based on the novels by Craig Johnson, and TNT signed up Rizzoli and Isles for a fourth season in summer 2013.

Speaking of renewals, Matthew Gray Gubler, one of the stars of Criminal Minds, renewed his contract with the show for two more years.

The USA Network ordered 12 episodes of Graceland from the creator of White Collar. The show follows a group of diverse law-enforcement agents from the DEA, FBI and Customs whose worlds collide when they're forced to live together in an undercover beach house in Southern California.

Fox hasn't given an order for the pilot Guilty yet but is extending options on the potential stars, which bodes well. The project stars Cuba Gooding, Jr., as "a brilliant, morally questionable defense attorney who, after being falsely convicted of fraud and stripped of his legal license, uses his unorthodox methods to solve the cases he’s been prohibited from handling and to ultimately exact revenge on the man who set him up."

The official trailer for Breaking Bad's final season has been released amid news the cast will host a large panel at Comic-Con. Also added to Comic-Con: Jonny Lee Miller (Sherlock Holmes) and Lucy Liu (Watson) from the new CBS series Elementary.

Fox is offering a trailer for its fall new medical drama, The Mob Doctor, which centers on young surgeon Grace Devlin (Jordana Spiro) moonlighting as a doctor for the Chicago mafia between hospital shifts.

Although American viewers won't get to see the latest season of Wallender (based on the novels of Henning Mankell) until September, the BBC is releasing a trailer for the upcoming British premiere in July.

PODCASTS

NPR's Morning Edition chatted with author Paco Ignacio Taibo II about his crime novels set in Mexico City. They feature Hector Belascoaran Shayne, a former engineer who got a "certificate in detection" through a correspondence course.