Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Filmmaker Danny Boyle is planning to adapt the documentary Smash And Grab: The Story Of The Pink Panthers for a feature film. The story is based on the true-life team of the most successful jewel thieves in the world, known as the Pink Panthers, as they carry out heists across Europe and Asia while global police officers hunt them down.

New Line has picked up the remake rights to Secret, a Korean crime thriller about a detective who finds incriminating evidence that may implicate his wife at a murder scene.

Director Peter Landesman has come aboard Down By the River, an espionage revenge thriller based on the nonfiction book by Charles Bowden. The plot centers around the murder of the younger brother of a high-ranking DEA agent, ordered by a Mexican druglord, and how the agent crosses the border to catch his brother's killer.

The late Tom Clancy's literary creation Jack Ryan lives on in a trailer for the new Shadow Recruit film. It stars Chris Pine as a young Ryan from 9/11 through Afghanistan and into the CIA, where he uncovers a Russian plot to undermine the U.S. economy.

A trailer was also released for the upcoming film Out of the Furnace, from Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper. The film stars Woody Harrelson as a dirty and dangerous backwoods criminal and Christian Bale as the factory worker who goes after him when his brother disappears. Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe, Zoe Saldana and Sam Shepard all co-star.

TELEVISION

Shondaland has been very busy indeed. The hot production company has sold another pilot, this one a crime procedural to ABC. Titled Just Rewards, it follows a bankrupt, forty-something divorcée and her underemployed Millenial neighbors who make ends meet by chasing reward money for unsolved crimes.

CBS has committed to producing a pilot based on the 2012 thriller Zoo by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. The story centers around a wave of violent animal attacks
across the planet and the young renegade scientist who has to unlock the mystery behind the pandemic. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Kim Raver and William Devane have joined the cast of the Fox series 24: Live Another Day. They join star Kiefer Sutherland, who is back as CTU agent Jack Bauer, and Mary Lynn Rajskub as his quirky sidekick Chloe O’Brien.

Fox has scored the first success of the new fall season, quickly renewing its supernatural procedural Sleepy Hollow for a second season.

Equally pleased is NBC over its freshman drama Blacklist, starring James Spader as a wanted fugitive who turns himself in so that he can take down some other big name criminals. The network gave the go-ahead for a full season for the series.

NBC also handed out a pilot order for the futuristic drama Tin Man, a psychological crime thriller that focuses on "a fugitive robot accused of first-degree murder, who may hold the key to the future of human evolution, and the young female public defender forced to fight for his cause."

Omnimystery News reported that USA Network renewed Covert Affiairs for a fifth season.

ABC bought the pilot Beverly Kills, a drama about a wife and mom who retires from her job as a highly skilled hit-woman for the mob and tries to settle into domesticity, but is lured back into her former trade to clean up Beverly Hills and keep her family safe in the only way she knows how.

Alicia Witt and Edi Gathegi are joining the cast of FX/Sony TV's drama series Justified for its fifth season. Witt will play Wendy Crowe, the smart, sexy sister of crime lord Dale Crowe (Michael Rapaport), while Gathegi will play Jean Baptiste, a Haitian criminal in the employ of the Crowe family.

TV Guide spoke with NCIS executive producer Gary Glasberg about Ziva's exit from the show and what is next for Tony and the team.

Rhys Ifans is returning to Elementary on CBS for its second season, reprising his role as Sherlock Holmes’s brother Mycroft Holmes. Producers also confirmed that guest Natalie Dormer, playing Irene Adler, will
return around midseason and that the show hopes to have Sean Pertwee
also return as Inspector Lestrade.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

"Drugs, Poisons, Toxins, and Death" is the topic for this week's Crime & Science Radio podcast with Dr. D.P. Lyle.

Author William Boyd, who penned the latest installment in the James Bond franchise, talked with NPR about his writing and tackling the iconic fictional spy.

THEATER

Matt Smith (Dr. Who) is taking on the lead role role for the musical adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis's 1991 novel American Psycho, originally made into a 2000 movie starring Christian Bale. The musical opens at London's Almeida Theatre on December 3, and depending on its performance, there are plans to then transfer the production to the West End and Broadway.