Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

George Clooney is looking to remake the Norwegian thriller Pioneer (set during Norway's old boom in the 1980s) via Clooney's Smokehouse production company. No word yet on whether Clooney will also star.

Sony Pictures won a bidding war involving multiple studios for the Joe Gazzam script Shadow Run, an action thriller said to be "in the vein of the Bourne movies."

Open Road Films picked up U.S. distribution rights to the thriller The Tank from writer-director Kellie Madison, which is about six people entering an isolation tank designed to simulate the lengthy trip to Mars.

Oscar-winner Richard Dreyfuss is joining the cast of the politically-themed thriller Zipper, about a successful prosecutor (Patrick Wilson) who risks losing his family and career to his temptation for other women. Dreyfuss will play a political "kingmaker."

Olivia Wilde has been added to the cast of the thriller Meadowland, playing a mom whose son disappears, leading her to form a dangerous relationship with a neglected boy.

Mad Men's January Jones is joining the supernatural thriller The Shuddering, playing a woman with strange visions who gets involved with a mystery that "goes back farther than she could imagine."

TELEVISION

Omnimystery News reported that BBC Two has order a five-part original drama series written by bestselling crime novelist Tom Rob Smith. Titled London Spy, it is centered on a young romantic drawn into the dangerous world of espionage.

Jason Isaacs (Awake) will star in USA Network’s upcoming event series Dig. He'll play an FBI agent who uncovers a conspiracy while investigating the death of an archaeologist.

Author Dennis Lehane is penning an adaptation of the Douglas Perry's new biography, Eliot Ness: The Rise And Fall Of An American Hero, for WGN America. The project chronicles the two decades of the famed prohibition agent folowing his take-down of Al Capone.

TNT has decided not to order a second season of its series Mob City, about the battle between the police and mobsters in 1940s Los Angeles.

David Fincher (House Of Cards, Gone Girl), is teaming up with HBO for a U.S. adaptation of the UK drama series Utopia, to be written by Gillian Flynn. The series surrounds the die-hard fans of an iconic, underground graphic novel who find themselves plunged into a game of shifting loyalties, conspiracy and shocking twists as they learn the dark secrets behind a sequel. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

BBC America is developing a Robin Hood drama titled Nottingham, with a different twist on the familiar tale: the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood are actually one and the same person: Robin Hood by night and seeming royal loyalist-turned spy by day.

Tom Hardy has joined Cillian Murphy to star in the BBC's gangster drama Peaky Blinders.

Jane Krakowski will star in Fox's comedy-mystery pilot Dead Boss, about an overachiever who's wrongfully convicted of murdering her boss and forced to rely on her train-wreck sister to prove her innocence. The projects based on the UK show of the same name.

Gavin Stenhouse has been cast as the lead in NBC thriller pilot Coercion, playing a decorated American war hero and newly-minted CIA analyst whose Russian-sleeper-cell family are tasked with turning him against his country.

British actress Sarah-Jane Potts has been cast as the replacement for Georgina Rylance in the Fox adaptation of the British procedural Broadchurch, playing attractive hotel owner Gemma.

Alec Baldwin will guest-star in an as-yet-to-be-revealed role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in an episode directed by star Mariska Hargitay.

Deadline reported that Rose Rollins is set as one of the leads in TNT's legal drama pilot Guilt By Association, based on the novels by former prosecutor Marcia Clark, while Jamey Sheridan, (Homeland) has been cast in TNT's action-drama pilot Agent X, starring Sharon Stone.

Deadline noted two additional crime drama castings, including Gerald McRaney (House of Cards) in TNT's action-drama pilot Agent X, and Elvis Nolasco and Caitlin Gerard in ABC's American Crime.

ITV has commissioned an eighth season of Inspector Lewis, with Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox reprising their roles as Oxford detectives. This series will find Hathaway (Laurence Fox) has been promoted to Inspector after an extended break from the force, with the retired Lewis (Kevin Whately) drafted back to renew their partnership. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Former West Wing cast member Ron Canada will guest-star on an upcoming episod
e of Elementary a retired high school teacher from a crime-plagued Brooklyn neighborhood.

Oscar nominee Juliette Lewis will star opposite Ryan Phillippe in ABC's new drama series Secrets & Lies, about a family man who finds the body of a young boy and quickly becomes the prime murder suspect.

The reboot of The Flash on the CW network has signed Dawson's Creek star John Wesley Shipp, who played The Flash in the early 1990s CBS television series. His role in the new version is not being identified, for now.

Ahna O’Reilly is set to star in the CW pilot Identity, from executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci. It's about a young woman who receives an organ transplant from a newfound half-brother only to find her new family is the target of a CIA investigation, and the agency wants her to play informant.

TV Guide compiled the "complete pilot report" for the various U.S. networks and all the contenders vying for full season orders. This link is for ABC, but the article also includes links for NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW).

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

On the most recent Crime and Science Radio podcast: Former FBI Agent George Fong.

THEATER

The musical adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho is eyeing a commercial London return this fall, with a possible U.S. run in the future. It's set in the during the 1980's era of Wall Street greed and starred AFTA Award-nominated "Doctor Who" star Matt Smith starred as serial killer Patrick Bateman.