Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Robert De Niro has signed to star opposite Robert Pattinson in French filmmakers Olivier Assayas' Idol's Eye. Details of the heist action-thriller are being kept under wraps, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

John Moore (A Good Day to Die Hard) has been hired to direct The Hunters, based on the book by Chris Kuzneski, with a screenplay by Robert Mark Kament (Taken). The story follows a team of renegades financed by a billionaire philanthropist who are tasked with finding the world's most legendary treasures.

At Cannes, Drafthouse Films acquired the U.S. distribution rights to Cedric Jimenez’s period crime thriller La French, starring Jean Dujardin. The film takes place in the late 1970s in Marseille and is based on the true story of the judge who tried to stop the powerful French Connection drug cartel.

Here's the first trailer for A Walk Among the Tombstones, based on Lawrence Block's novel of the same name. The story features Liam Neeson as recurring character Matt Scudder, an ex-NYPD cop who now works as an unlicensed private investigator operating just outside the law.

Jeremy Renner fights the CIA in a new trailer for Kill the Messenger, based on the true story of reporter Gary Webb, who uncovered a massive CIA-fronted narcotics operation.

TELEVISION

Last week, both the Television Critics Association and Broadcast Television Journalists Association announced their nominees for their annual program awards. Crime dramas represented on those lists include Breaking Bad, Orphan Black, True Detective, The Americans, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Fargo, Broadchurch, House of Cards, and Sherlock: His Last Vow.

Paramount TV and Anonymous Content (the executive producer of HBO's True Detective series) is mounting a series inspired by Caleb Carr’s best-selling novel, The Alienist. Set in late 19th-century New York, the story follows the new—and suspect—breed of forensic psychologist detectives (known as "alienists") who work in secret to try and target a serial killer under the direction of newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt.

Eric Overmyer (Treme, Boardwalk Empire) is taking on showrunner duties for the series Capitol Crimes, based on the mystery series by author Warren Adler about a female homicide detective and senator’s daughter who solves high-profile murders in prestigious D.C. circles.

True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto revealed some details about the second season of the show, hinting that there will be three leads, and the setting will be somewhere in California.

Director Adam Shankman and screenwriter David Kajganich (The Invasion) are creating a drama series for HBO, set in the pre-Stonewall New York City of the late 1960s. Titled Open City, the story explores characters from disparate corners of Manhattan "as they navigate the cultural revolutions and political turmoil of the era, including the unlikely alliance between the Mafia and the city’s gay community in the opening of a West Village nightclub."

USA Network released a Covert Affairs teaser promo for the upcoming new season, which premieres Tuesday, June 24. It shows Annie's latest mission hitting too close to home when a major explosion rocks the CIA.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

This week on Crime and Science Radio: Deadly Doctors, Killer Nurses and other Medical Miscreants, with guest Bea Yorkerr. Yorker is renowned for her research into Munchausen By Proxy, her landmark study of medical serial killers, and her publications on other topics that bring law, psychology, medicine, and ethics together.

In episode 2 of Drinking with Writers, author Richard Lange join host Paul Losada to discuss Lange's crime novels This Wicked World and Angel Baby, how he’s been juggling a new work schedule in film and television development, and advice every writer should live by.

THEATER

The latest film-to-stage adaptation appears to be a new production of George Roy Hill’s 1973 Oscar winner The Sting, which starred Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Set during the Great Depression in Chicago, the film is about two con men who plan an elaborate revenge scam.