Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Sony Pictures has optioned Olen Steinhauer's three novels featuring Milo Weaver. Weaver is a former CIA agent known as "a tourist," i.e., an undercover agent with no home and no identity. The first project in the series will be scripted by Matt Corman and Chris Ord (Covert Affairs). (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Myriad Pictures announced an adaptation of Charlie Huston's noir thriller novel, Caught Stealing. The project will star Alec Baldwin as a sadistic cop who chases after the character played by Patrick Wilson, a "hotshot high school baseball prospect turned unlucky alcoholic, going-nowhere bartender who mistakenly gets caught up in a bloody treasure hunt through New York City."

James Patterson's novel Guilty Wives is headed for the big screen. The plot follows four married gal pals whose vacation in Monte Carlo leads to an orgy gone wrong, murder and a race to clear their names.

Director Daniel Alfredson has started filming Echoes From The Dead (Skumtimmen), an adaptation of Swedish author Johan Theorin's book that was voted Best First Mystery Novel 2007 by the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers. The story follows a woman whose five-year-old son disappeared 20 years ago without a trace, although the woman believes her father was involved in the boy's death.

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has been working to get an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice off the ground for awhile, potentially starring Robert Downey Jr. as pothead private detective Larry "Doc" Sportello. Anderson took some time off the project to get funding for his newly-released film The Master, but has turned his attention back to Inherent Vice and is working on the script. There's no date set for production.

Bruce Willis is in talks to join American Assassin, a new thriller from director Jeffrey Nachmanoff that's based on a script by Mike Finch. The plot follows a young man named Mitch Rapp who joins the CIA after his girlfriend is killed during a terrorist attack. Willis would take on the role of Rapp's mentor.

Daniel Craig has contracted to star in at least two more Bond films. However, it should be noted that previous actors in the role (Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton) were released from their contracts early.

TV

TNT bought two pilots based on the work of crime novelists David Baldacci and Robert Littell: Baldacci's King and Maxwell, which follows Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, former secret service agents whose unique skills gives them a leg up on conventional law enforcement; and Littell's spy drama Legends, centered on the deep-cover operative Martin Odum, who has an uncanny ability to transform himself into a different person for each job. (As reported by Crimespree.)

Fringe executive producers J.J. Abrams and J.H. Wyman are teaming up again for a new procedural sci-fi project with a pilot production commitment from Fox. The premise is described as "an action-packed buddy cop show, set in the near future, when all LAPD officers are partnered with highly evolved human-like androids."

Robert De Niro's production company signed a deal with Showtime for a small-screen adaption of his 2006 film The Good Shepherd, a spy drama loosely based on actual events surrounding the birth of counter-intelligence in the CIA.

A new CW detective drama pilot, Boiling Point, will focus on two boyband members who become private detectives to earn money when their fame fades, which also give them a chance to hunt for the missing brother of one of the duo.

Dick Wolf (Law & Order) is adapting the UK legal thriller Injustice for US television. The British version was written by Anthony Horowitz, the prolific screenwriter (Midsomer Murders, Foyle's War) and author of over 35 books, including the new Sherlock Holmes novel, The House of Silk. Injustice follows William Travers, a criminal barrister who is recovering from a traumatic series of events that have shaken his belief in the legal system.

THEATER

The new season of Houston's Theater Under the Stars will include the musical Jekyll & Hyde October 9-21. Starring Tony Award Nominee/American Idol finalist Constantine Maroulis and Grammy Award nominee Deborah Cox, the play is based on the classical novella by Robert Louis Stevenson.