Media Murder for Monday

It's time for this week's crime drama news:

MOVIES

Emma Donoghue, the writer of both the novel and Academy Award nominated-screenplay Room, is teaming up with Monumental Pictures to make a feature adaptation of her novel Frog Music. The novel is set in the summer of 1876 in San Francisco in the grip of a record-breaking heatwave, smallpox epidemic, and festering racism and fear, and is inspired by the real-life unsolved murder of a young woman, Jenny Bonnet.

Kill the Messenger director Michael Cuesta has signed on to helm American Assassin, based on a script by Stephen Schiff from the Vince Flynn spy novel. CBS Films has been aiming to make a movie centered on Flynn's protagonist, Mitch Rapp, for several years and has decided to focus first on how Rapp became a CIA agent.

Sam Raimi is circling the director's chair for the remake of Jacques Audiard’s thriller, A Prophet, based on the screenplay rewrite by author Dennis Lehane. The original film followed an illiterate French-Arab teen who is sent down for six years and initiated into the prison’s criminal underworld, then starts plotting "his rapid rise through the violent and brutal inmate hierarchy to become a formidable player."

Robert Knepper has been cast in Paramount’s upcoming sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, playing Gen. Harkness, a retired general-turned-CEO of a private military contractor firm. The film once again stars Tom Cruise in the title role as he returns to the headquarters of his old Army unit, only to find he’s been accused of a 16-year-old murder.

Theo James is in talks to take over the role Josh Hutcherson was to play in the political thriller Backstabbing for Beginners, playing an idealistic UN program coordinator who becomes involved in the fight for oil in post-war Iraq and uncovers a conspiracy. Ben Kingsley is already on board to play a mentor for Hutcherson's character in the project, which is based on international relations veteran Michael Soussan’s memoir Backstabbing For Beginners: My Crash Course In International Diplomacy.

TELEVISION

USA Network has given a 10-episode, straight-to-series order to Eyewitness, an adaptation of the Norwegian crime thriller Øyevitne. The show explores a grisly crime from the point of view of the eyewitnesses, two innocent teenage boys who secretly witness a shooting in a forest and barely escape with their lives.

David Simon’s The Deuce, set in the porn industry during the 1970s and ’80s and starring James Franco, has landed a series order from HBO. The project is co-written by author George Pelecanos and centers on twin brothers, Vincent Martino and Frankie Martino, (both played by Franco) who became fronts for mob control of the volatile and lucrative sex industry.

In addition to a new Nancy Drew reboot, CBS gave pilot commitments for two new crime dramas from Supergirl executive producer Greg Berlanti. The first is Out of Body (written by Jennifer Johnson), which follows a criminal who finds himself transported into the bodies of people in peril, and must use his experience to keep from being killed, and the second is an untitled project (from writer Chris Fedak) that follows a young billionaire tech genius who utilizes his cutting-edge technology to partner with a street-smart but old-school San Francisco police detective.

Sherlock fans may be disappointed to hear that the fourth season of the show probably won't air until sometime in 2017, according to PBS president Paula Kerger. Although the show will begin production early this year, the busy schedules of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman add up to a delay in Sherlock's timeline.

ABC released a trailer for the return of How to Get Away with Murder, which premieres on February 11th.

A trailer was also released for the second season of the BBC's Yorkshire crime drama Happy Valley, with Catherine Cawood continuing to head up her team of police officers in The Calder Valley. James Norton, who plays Tommy Lee Royce, also returns for Season 2, although there will be new stars and new story lines.

The BBC also posted a trailer for its upcoming miniseries adaptation of John Le Carré's novel The Night Manager, starring Tom Hiddleston as a former soldier working as a night manager at a hotel who is recruited by British Intelligence to complete an undercover mission, with double-crossing courtesy of Hugh Laurie.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Suspense Radio's Inside Edition podcast started off the new year with a trio of bestselling authors, including Alan Jacobson, Jeff Abbott, and Leigh Adams. 

Private eye author M. Ruth Myers chatted with mystery author Debbi Mack on Crime Cafe about Myers' Maggie Sullivan mystery series and other works.

CrimeFiction.FM welcomed debut author R.W. Wallace to talk about her atmospheric mystery, The Red Brick Cellars, set in Toulouse, France, where two unlikely sleuths team up to solve the murder of a beloved politician.

THEATER

Theatre Out, Orange County's gay and lesbian theatre company, is presenting an all-male version of the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler classic Sweeney Todd (The Demon Barber of Fleet Street), which, like the recent Broadway revival, will be set in an insane asylum. David C. Carnevale directs the production, which continues through Feb. 13 at the California venue.

The stage thriller Gaslight opened at Toronto's Ed Mirvish Theatre, with a run through February 28th. The show features northern Irish actress Flora Montgomery alongside Game of Thrones stars Owen Teale and Ian McElhinney in the psychological tale of a woman convinced she's losing her mind when her husband is away on business - but is the terror only in her imagination or are dark secrets living in her home? The surprise arrival of a retired detective leads to a shocking discovery that shakes her respectable Victorian marriage to its core.