Media Murder for Monday

Monday means it's time for the weekly round-up of crime drama news:

AWARDS

At the Academy Awards ceremony last night, the biographical crime drama Spotlight was named Best Picture and won for best Original Screenplay (Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy); Brie Larson won Best Actress for her performance in Room; Leonardo DiCaprio won Best Actor for The Revenant and the film's helmer, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, also won Best Director honors; and Mark Rylance took home Best Supporting Actor statue for the Cold War spy thriller Bridge of Spies. It was also good to see 85-year-old composer Ennio Moricone win his first Oscar for Best Musical Score for The Hateful Eight after "only" several hundred movies throughout his long career.

MOVIES

Fresh off of the wild success of Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds has already chosen his next project. He and co-stars Salma Hayek, Elodie Yung, Samuel L. Jackson, and Gary Oldman have joined The Hitman's Bodyguard, about the best protection agent in the world (Reynolds) assigned to a hit man (Jackson) who have to endure each other's company as they encounter a ruthless Eastern European dictator (Oldman) determined to bring them down.

The Thomas Crowne Affair is getting remade again (following the previous 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo). Creed's Michael B. Jordan is in talks to play the role of the wealthy businessman who conducts robberies on the side until an insurance investigator tracks him down and the two begin an affair even as Crown plans another heist.

TELEVISION

Fox announced it's giving Bones a final chapter with a 12-episode farewell 12th season. Stars David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel have closed deals to return as the series’ leading duo of Booth and Brennan, and showrunners are Jonathan Collier and Michael Peterson will also be returning. Collier and Peterson added that "Knowing there is a Season 12, we can now write the most rewarding Season 11 finale possible – one we hope will leave our fans excited for what’s to come in this final season of Bones.”

Fox also announced its literary adventure drama Houdini & Doyle will premiere May 2, taking over the 9 PM Monday slot that the week after Lucifer's season finale. The series focuses on the unlikely real-life friendship between master illusionist Harry Houdini (Michael Weston) and Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Stephen Mangan) as they grudgingly join forces with New Scotland Yard to investigate unsolved and inexplicable crimes with a supernatural slant. Rebecca Liddiard plays Adelaide Stratton, whose character is the first female constable ever to work for the London Metropolitan Police Force.

Royal Pains leading man Mark Feuerstein is set for a major recurring role opposite returning stars Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell in Fox’s Prison Break sequel event series. Feuerstein will play Scott Ness, the husband of Dr. Sara Tancredi, the character played by Sarah Wayne Callies on the original series. Callies is in talks to reprise her role in the follow-up — one of several Prison Break fan favorites in discussions to return along with Robert Knepper, Rockmond Dunbar and Amaury Nolasco.

Jimmy Smits is set to co-star opposite Corey Hawkins and Miranda Otto in 24: Legacy, Fox’s drama pilot, which reboots the 24 franchise with brand new characters and cast. The reboot chronicles military hero Eric Carter’s (Hawkins) return to the U.S. and the trouble that follows him back – compelling him to ask CTU for help in saving his life, and stopping what potentially could be one of the largest-scale terror attacks on American soil. Smits will play John Donovan, a powerful U.S. Senator with higher political aspirations.  

Conor Leslie is set to co-star opposite Sanaa Lathan in Fox event series Shots Fired, with Manny Perez on board in a recurring role. The project examines the dangerous aftermath of racially charged shootings in a small Tennessee town as seen through the eyes of a government aide (Leslie) who works directly for the governor. Perez will recur as James Ruiz, who works at the Department of Justice.

Demi Moore is returning to TV for her first major role in 20 years, starring in the drama 10 Days in the Valley from Rookie Blue co-creator Tassie Cameron. She will play Jane Sadler, an overworked writer and single mother in the middle of a tumultuous separation, and when her 5-year-old daughter is taken from her bed in the middle of the night, Jane must put everything on the line — including her TV show, her loyalties and her deepest and darkest secrets — to get her child back.

Bill Paxton will play one of the bad-cop leads in CBS’ drama pilot Training Day, a present-day re-imagining of Antoine Fuqua’s acclaimed 2001 feature that starred Denzel Washington as a rogue narcotics detective and Ethan Hawke as his rookie cop partner. Set 15 years after the film left off, the TV show gives the dynamic of the characters a twist: an idealistic young African-American police officer is appointed to an elite squad of the LAPD where he is partnered with seasoned, morally ambiguous detective Frank Rourke (Paxton).

Felix Solis and ER alum Anthony Edwards are set for roles in Drew, CBS’ drama based on the Nancy Drew character from the classic mystery book series. Drew is described as "a contemporary take on the character from the books, with Nancy, now in her 30s, working as a detective for the NYPD where she investigates and solves crimes using her uncanny observational skills, all while navigating the complexities of life in a modern world." Edwards will play Carson, Nancy’s father who graduated at the top of his class at Yale Law, and Felix Solis will play Lieutenant Ford, who moved to NY after his wife died under suspicious circumstances. He was a person of interest but never charged. He left all that behind and tries to forget his past by burying himself in work. Also recently added to the cast: Graceland alumna Vanessa Ferlito will play George, an NYPD homicide detective and Nancy’s former partner on the force who has an innate ability to put other people at ease.

Showtime’s Ray Donovan has cast Pasha Lychnikoff in a recurring role that of a Russian gangster wanted by the L.A.P.D. Last season, Ray (Liev Schreiber) learned "that clean slates are a dirty business, but what doesn’t kill a Donovan only makes him stronger. "Jon Voight, Paula Malcomson, Eddie Marsan, Dash Mihok and Stephen Bauer also star on the drama series.

Adam Davidson is set to direct Fox’s drama pilot Recon from Warner Bros TV. Written by The Vampire Diaries exec producer Caroline Dries, Recon is about a rookie FBI agent (Tracy Spiridakos) who embeds herself in a suspected terrorist family.

A four
th series of Endeavor, the prequel to Inspector Morse, will go in to production later this Spring. Shaun Evans will return to the 1967-set series, which will again be written entirely by Russell Lewis, who devised the series (based of course on both the original novels by Colin Dexter’s as well as the earlier TV show too).

Amazon has canceled the drama series Mad Dogs after one season, according to the show’s showrunner and executive producer, Shawn Ryan, who was also the creator of the FX drama The Shield. Mad Dogs centers on a group of longtime friends on a tropical vacation who find themselves ensnared in a world of crime and murder and was adapted from the U.K. series of the same name.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Authors Megan Abbott and Sarah Weinman participated in a discussion with NPR's Steve Inskeep about how publishers commonly promote books by comparing them to other books, sometimes the same books over and over again - most recently the "girl" books such as Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

Joe R. Lansdale, author of Hap and Leonard mystery series, the basis for a Sundance TV series that begins March 2, joined Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air program.

The latest Crime and Science Radio podcast was titled "Follow the Money: Catching Cheaters, Frauds and Con Artists" and featured an interview with Securities Fraud Investigator Richard B. York.

Crime fiction author and former horse breeder Sasscer Hill chatted with mystery author Debbi Mack about her two mystery series, including one to be released by St. Martin's Press, and her other writing, on Crime Cafe.

Mystery Melange

The Los Angeles Times Book Awards announced their finalist lists for 2016. The Mystery/Thriller category nods this year include:

• Lou Berney, The Long and Faraway Gone 
• Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
• Brian Panowich, Bull Mountain
• Richard Price, The Whites
• Don Winslow, The Cartel

As part of the 2016 Edgar Awards Week, the Mysterious Bookshop will host an evening featuring members of Mystery Writers of America, the Edgar Award nominees, bestselling authors, and publisher representatives. As the MWA put it, it's an "unusual opportunity to meet some of the best and brightest in the mystery world" and takes place on April 26th at 6 p.m.  For more information on all of the Edgar Week festivities, including a symposium on April 27 (featuring a one-on-one interview with the 2016 Grand Master, Walter Mosley), check out the MWA website.

The UK's National Literacy Trust and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society have launched an award in memory of the late mystery author Ruth Rendell. The prize is for an author or writer who has worked towards raising literacy levels in the UK, either through their writing and books or through their advocacy and championing of the cause of literacy. Schools, charities, libraries, booksellers and individuals can nominate candidates via the NLT website by the May 31. (HT to Janet Rudolph.)

Coming in March, Dean Street Press will be completing their reissues of Annie Hayne's 1920's crime fiction by releasing all five of her stand-alone mysteries, complementing the Inspector Furnival and Inspector Stoddart series already published. As DSP's Rupert Heath noted, Hayne's mysteries "show a distinct bridge between Victorian/Edwardian fiction and an innovative strain in which some of the motifs of golden age crime fiction were established."

More sad news from the publishing world: Five Star is dropping its mystery line to focus on the Western and Frontier Fiction lines. Since 2000, the imprint has published exclusively first edition books, many of which went on to earn starred reviews, Edgar Award and Anthony Award nominations, and land on bestseller lists. Apparently, Five Star will be honoring its already-signed contracts for books in the pipeline.

In more publishing changes in the winds, Penguin has merged its Berkley imprint into the unified Putnam and Dutton group. In reporting the change, Publishers Weekly surmised that on its surface, the changes look as though PRH is trying to cut back its number of mass market titles that are losing much of their market share to e-books. Penguin Publishing Group President Madeline McIntosh emphasized Berkley remains committed to publishing mass market paperbacks, while continuing to "refine the size of the list in order to ensure optimum results per title."

At one time, mass market paperbacks revolutionized the publishing industry, and the Paperback Revolution blog posted a nice overview of the Collins Crime Club, launched in 1930, and its competition with Penguin in helping to bring authors like Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Freeman Wills Crofts, and Philip Macdonald to a wider audience.

Writing for Disclaimer Magazine, Graham Kirby investigated the mystery of the long neglect of Gladys Mitchell, a relic of the fabled Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

After we lost author Harper Lee last week, who died at the age of 89, Adam Wagner made the case for "three reasons Harper Lee was almost a crime writer."

Your mileage will undoubtedly vary, but Danilo Castro of the website CinemaNerdz picked out his list of "The 20 Best Detective Movies of All Time."

New research concluded that robots could learn human values by reading books. Mark Riedl and Brent Harrison from the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology recently unveiled Quixote, a prototype system able to learn social conventions from simple stories.

Think you took a long time to return that overdue library book? Mental Floss compiled a listing of "11 Ridiculously Overdue Library Books (That Were Finally Returned)."

Did William Shakespeare have a secret son who grew up to become the poet laureate of England? A new biography by Simon Andrew Stirling claims he did.

The new crime poem at the 5-2 this week is "Grandiflora" by Rosemarie Keenan.

In the Q&A roundup, Craig Sisterson welcomed Aussie-Scot author Helen Fitzgerald to take the "9mm Interview" challenge; Gary Phillips stopped by Omnimystery News to chat about the new collection of three of his crime novellas titled 3 the Hard Way (Down & Out Books); Lauren Carr also joined ON to discuss her new mystery in the Mac Faraday series, Cancelled Vows; and the Mystery People snared Minerva Koenig to talk about her second Julia Kalas book, South of Nowhere.

Media Murder for Monday

Here's the latest crime drama news from screens big and small:

MOVIES

Julianne Moore is eyeing an unspecified villainous role in Kingsman 2, the sequel to the movie adaption of Mark Millar's action comic book series. If Moore signs on, she'll join star Taron Egerton, who will reprise his role as Eggsy. The first installment of the franchise starred Colin Firth as a sophisticated James Bond-esque agent that took the delinquent Eggsy under his wing and turned him into a suave agent. Firth’s character died in the first movie, but there have been talks of him returning in some form.

The original John Wick spawned the upcoming sequel John Wick 2, with a recently-announced setting change to Rome. Like the original, the sequel will star Keanu Reeves as an ex-hitman who comes out of retirement to track down gangsters. Unfortunately for fans, the release date for the sequel has been pushed back to February 10, 2017.

During the build up to the latest James Bond adventure, Spectre, there was a great deal of speculation as to whether or not Daniel Craig would be back to play the iconic spy for another movie. Even though he's reportedly contracted for one more, at one point Craig said the thought of playing the character again made him want to "slash his own wrists." MGM hopes to make it easier for him to commit to the project by pushing production back a year to allow Craig to shoot around his other projects.

TELEVISION

Amy Adams is set to star in a drama series currently being shopped around, which is based on Gillian Flynn's bestselling novel Sharp Objects. She will play Camille, a journalist tasked with covering the murders of two girls after returning to work from a stay in a mental institution. The all-star creative team also includes director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club) and exec producer Jason Blum.

Angelina Jolie's Salt is the latest film to get the TV-series-adaptation treatment, with Sony Pictures developing the 2010 spy thriller as a potential TV show. Phillip Noyce directed the original film about Evelyn Salt (Jolie), a CIA agent released from a North Korean prison camp who turns out to be a Russian double-agent.

BBC Four has snapped up UK rights to the Swedish thriller Modus, an eight-part drama about criminal psychologist and ex-FBI profiler Inger Johanne Vik who returns to Sweden to spend more time with her two daughters. Vik’s autistic eldest daughter witnesses a murder, and as the number of mysterious murders starts to increase, Vik, together with detective Ingvar Nyman, takes up the hunt for what appears to be a cold-blooded serial killer on a mission.

The crime drama Unforgettable has been canceled after four season. Starring Poppy Montgomery as a female detective with the ability to visually remember everything, the procedural ran for three seasons on CBS before moving to A&E.

The BBC began filming on a second series of the critically acclaimed thriller The Missing. The first season starred James Nesbitt as a troubled man who returns to the scene of his son's disappearance on a French holiday eight years ago because he has learned new information. In this second eight-part season of the anthology series, Tchéky Karyo returns as French missing persons detective Julien Baptiste with a new case, new characters and a new location. The cast also includes Roger Allam, Laura Fraser and Florian Bartholomäi.

The Messengers alum Anna Diop has been cast opposite Corey Hawkins and Miranda Otto in the Fox pilot 24: Legacy, which reboots the 24 franchise with brand new characters and cast.

Sarita Choudhury (Homeland) and Karan Oberoi (NCIS) have booked series regular roles on Fox's drama pilot Recon, about a rookie FBI agent who embeds herself in a suspected terrorist family. Choudhury will play Farrah, a successful businesswoman who struggles to balance work, family and the Five Pillars of Islam. Oberoi is Jared, son of Farrah and her husband Omar. He’s described as "a charming bad boy and heir to his family’s company with ambitions that don’t align with his father’s business plan."

Eve Harlow has landed a series regular role on ABC’s murder trial drama pilot The Jury.  Written by VJ Boyd and Mark Bianculli and executive produced by Carol Mendelsohn, The Jury follows a single murder trial a season as seen through the eyes of the individual jurors. Harlow will play Melody, who’s completely cynical about the justice system.

Rizzoli & Isles may be coming to an end, but not before Angie Harmon hits a major milestone, directing the 100th episode. The drama is coming to a close after its seventh season and the show, on which Harmon stars alongside Sasha Alexander, and will hit its 100-mark on the eighth episode of Season 7. The show is currently in the midst of Season 6, which wraps in March.

Oscar-nominated actor Djimon Hounsou is set to co-star opposite Jason Patric in the second installment of Fox’s psychological thriller event series Wayward Pines, executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan. He'll play CJ Mitchum, an original resident of Wayward Pines and a historian for the town. Based on the world created by author Blake Crouch in his bestselling series of books, the 10-episode second season of Wayward Pines picks up where  Season 1 left off, with the town’s residents battling the iron-fisted rule of the First Generation. 

Philip Winchester is set to headline the next installment in Dick Wolf’s Chicago franchise for NBC, tentatively titled Chicago Law. He is the first actor cast in the legal drama, eyed for a potential launch during the 2016-2017 season, likely in midseason.

Newcomer Dominique Columbus has signed on for a recurring role on the fourth season of Showtime drama series Ray Donovan. He’ll play Damon, described as a street-smart, homeless teen who packs a mean punch and becomes involved with the Donovan family. Ray Donovan stars Liev Schreiber as LA’s best professional fixer, the man called in "to make the city’s celebrities, superstar athletes and business moguls’ most complicated and combustible situations go away."

Publisher William Morrow is releasing a special TV tie-in edition book of Agatha Christie’s classic, And Then There Were None, tied to the Lifetime miniseries set to premiere on Sunday March 13th and Monday March 14th at 9pm ET/PT.   (HT to Janet Rudolph.)

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The Scottish Book Trust's podomatic show had a chat with bestselling author Val McDermid and her partner in crime (research), forensic anthropologist Sue Black.

The latest Suspense Radio podcast featured three great authors, two of them who are also from across The Pond, Adam Dunn, then M.C. Beaton and finally Mick Sims.

Author Gary Phillips joined CrimeFiction.FM to discuss his most recent work, a collection of hard-boiled novellas titled, 3 the Hard Way.

Mystery Melange

Several crime authors are offering fans the chance to feature in their next book in a campaign to raise money for the UK children's cancer charity CLIC Sargeant. Winners will see participating authors such as Elly Griffiths, Emma Donoghue, Paula Hawkins, and Simon Kernick create a character in the authors' next book named after them. The online bidding opens on February 25.

Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train, will headline this year’s Crime Story festival in Northumbria. The day-long festival provides access to experts from the fields of forensics, criminology, pathology and law, who reveal and interrogate the facts behind crime fiction, which this year  means they will pick apart a fictional crime written by Hawkins. The event takes place in Newcastle upon Tyne on Saturday June 11, with the full program to be announced and tickets released on March 10.

Philadelphia's Society Hill Playhouse is closing down after 56 years, which means that NoirCon will have to find a new home. But NoirCon's board invites everyone to pay their respects, share your favorite memories, and listen to an extraordinary lineup of writers read from their work at Noir at the Bar: the Final Curtain on March 19. Authors on hand will include Scott Adlerberg, Jen Conley, Dana King, Jon McGoran, Richie Narvaez, Ed Pettit, Wallace Stroby, David Swinson, Erik Arneson, T. Fox Dunham, William Lashner, Adrian McKinty, Rick Ollerman, Joe Samuel Starnes, Duane Swierczynski, and Dennis Tafoya.

NoirCon is also sponsoring the Ninth Annual Retreat to Goodisville/Carpool to Hell in Philly, in celebration of the 99th anniversary of the birth of prolific noir fiction author David Goodis (1917-1967). The car tour (BYOC - bring your own car) will include stops at various points that were important to the author's life and work, ending up at Julie’s Corner Bar for food, birthday cake "and a peek at what may have been the true inspiration for Harriet’s Hut in Down There."

As part of Sarasota County Libraries “One Book One Community” 2016 celebration of the 100th anniversary of John D. MacDonald’s birth, Florida author Tim Dorsey recently received the John D. MacDonald Award for Excellence in Florida Fiction. The award seeks to raise the profile of Florida fiction, especially in the mystery/crime/detective genre, and Dorsey is the seventh winner, joining such authors as Elmore Leonard and Stuart Kaminsky.

Southern Louisiana’s Iberia Parish, home to James Lee Burke’s fictional Depty Dave Robicheaux, is preparing to host its first official Dave Robicheaux’s Hometown Literary Festival, from April 8-10. Festival organizers promise storytelling, workshops, theatrical vignettes, music, local cuisine, bourré lessons and tournament, Dave Robicheaux tours and a 5K run.

Manslaughter Review, an online literary journal "featuring stories of blood and mayhem," just published is first free issue, with thirteen new crime fiction stories from Rusty Barnes, Sheldon Lee Compton, Jen Conley, Les Edgerton, and more.

When Dr. Nadine Akkerman of Leiden University conducted research for an upcoming monograph on female spies in the 17th century, she found at least 60 such instances and that these early Mata Hari precursors utilized an ingenious arsenal of tools, such as eggs and artichokes, to smuggle secrets.

Editor Eric Sandberg is looking for contributors for Sleuths, Private Eyes, and Policemen: An International Compendium of the 100 Greatest Literary Detectives, a new reference work under contract with Rowman & Littlefield for publication in late 2017. Each entry should be approximately 1000 words in length and contain 1) an initial ‘characteristic’ quotation, 2) an essay summarizing the distinctive features of the investigator, outlining major features of their fictional careers, and making the case for their ‘greatness’ based on factors such as literary-historical importance, uniqueness, literary quality, and cultural resonance, and 3) a bibliography of key works in which the investigator appears. If you're interested, submit your ideas by March 15 for consideration. (Hat tip to Ayo Onatade at Shots.)

Likewise, organizers of The Ageless Agatha Christie: Adaptations and Afterlives, A One-Day Conference at the University of Exeter, to be held on Monday June 20, are seeking scholarly paper submissions. The event has booked Sophie Hannah, author of Hercule Poirot mysteries, as one of the keynote speakers, but if you have a 20-minute paper along the lines of " Agatha Christie in the context of adaptations and afterlives," send along an abstract for consideration to be included in the program. (Hat tip again to Ayo Onatade via Shots Magazine.)

Agatha Christie will also star in a biographical graphic novel entitled Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie. The project is a collaboration of writers Anne Martinetti and Guillaume Lebeau, with Alexandre Franc creating the illustrations, which has a publication date set for May 10.

If you're a fan of the TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and you happen to find yourself in Australia this year, you can take advantage of the Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries Tour on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The tour begins with an afternoon tea, followed by a walking tour discovering some of the series’ production sites within Melbourne’s CBD and many of the "Marvellous Melbourne buildings of the 1920s" (when the book and series were set). It concludes with a specially created Phryne Fisher cocktail at Melbourne's famous Gin Palace.

Need some new books to add to your To Be Read pile? Check out some of the latest crime titles via reviews from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Chicago Tribune, and the Seattle Times.

This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is  "Jacqueline Explains Her Assault on Her Boyfriend to the Police," by Chuck Von Nordheim.

In the Q&A roundup, Eliot Pattison stopped by Omnimystery News to discuss the fourt
h mystery in his series set in the years before the Revolutionary War; sports columnist, screenwriter, and crime fiction writer John Schulian joined the Mystery People to talk about his debut noir novel, A Better Goodbye; Caroline Todd, who is one-half of the mother and son writing team Charles Todd, discussed their latest book, No Shred of Evidence; Crime by the Book welcomed Denmark's "Queen of Crime," Sara Blaedel, to discuss Nordic Noir; and musician and author Jesse Sublett talked with the Mystery People about his latest book, 1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime That Rocked the Capitol.

Media Murder for Monday

Welcome to Monday and the latest wrap-up of crime drama news on stage and screen:

AWARDS

The 2016 Writers Guild Awards, presented on Saturday, gave top honors to Spotlight (written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy) for Best Original Screenplay, and The Big Short, (screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, based on the Book by Michael Lewis) for Best Adapted Screenplay. On the TV side, writers for Mad Men, Mr. Robot, and Fargo were the big winners.

On the other side of the Pond, The Revenant was awarded Best Film at the 69th BAFTA film awards, with Leonardo DiCaprio claiming Best Actor and Brie Larson named Best Actress for The Room. The British Academy Film Awards also gave top honors to The Big Short for Best Adapted Screenplay and Spotlight for Best Original Screenplay.

MOVIES

NY-based production company Dutch Tilt Film has optioned the screen rights to Marion Pauw’s thriller Girl In The Dark. Originally published in Dutch in 2008, the book was a bestseller in the Netherlands, winning the annual award for the best Dutch crime fiction and adapted into a 2013 Dutch-language film. The story follows Iris, a lawyer who uncovers by accident she has an older brother who is autistic and imprisoned for brutally murdering his neighbor and her daughter - but is the naive brother actually guilty of the crime?

Grindstone Entertainment Group acquired the U.S. rights to the Adrien Brody film Manhattan Nocturne with a planned multi-platform release on May 20. The film, adapted from the book by Colin Harrison, follows a Manhattan tabloid writer (Brody), a dedicated husband and father who meets a seductive stranger and gets sucked into a world of sexual obsession and blackmail.

Film Noir Foundation’s Eddie Muller and Buenos Aires–based critic and programmer Fernando Martín Peña have organized the mini film festival, Death Is My Dance Partner: Film Noir in Postwar Argentina, which runs through Tuesday, February 16 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The event will sample six films produced during the Peronist period (1949–56), "years marked by booming nationalism under a soft dictatorship." The slates includes the world premiere of The Library of Congress restoration of a 1951 adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son.

TELEVISION

James Bond star Daniel Craig is set to headline a TV drama series titled Purity, based on the book of the same name by The Corrections author Jonathan Franzen. The project is being shopped to many of the major cable networks, with Showtime rumored to be in the lead, and follows the tale of a young American woman who becomes entangled with a charismatic German provocateur (Craig) and ultimately in secrets and murder.

After a four-month hiatus, Bones will return to Fox's lineup on April 14, airing in its most recent Thursday 8 p.m. time slot. Picking up after the eventful Season 11 fall finale, Bones finds Hodgins (TJ Thyne) eight weeks into his rehabilitation and forced to navigate life in a wheelchair. Meanwhile, Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (David Boreanaz) investigate the death of a public defender who had multiple defendants from previous cases with motives to kill her.

USA Network has picked up to series the drama pilot Shooter, from Paramount TV and Universal Cable Prods. The project, based on Stephen Hunter’s novel Point of Impact (and the 2007 Paramount film starring Mark Wahlberg), is written by John Hlavin and executive produced by Wahlberg. It stars Ryan Phillippe as an expert marksman living in exile who is coaxed back into action after learning of a plot to kill the president.

Fox has ordered a Lethal Weapon remake to pilot starring Damon Wayans as Roger Murtaugh and directed by McG. The original four-movie buddy cop action franchise starred Danny Glover as Murtaugh, partnered with Mel Gibson, and in the remake, a Texas cop and former Navy SEAL Riggs moves to Los Angeles to start anew after he suffers the loss of his wife and baby. There, he is partnered with LAPD detective Murtaugh, who, having recently suffered a “minor” heart attack, must avoid stress in his life.

Former Hart Of Dixie star Wilson Bethel has landed a co-starring role on A&E Network’s hip-hop crime drama pilot The Infamous. It revolves around two complicated men on a collision course: an ambitious reformed gangster (Bokeem Woodbine) poised to break out of South Central and the LAPD detective hell-bent on taking him down, set against real events in turbulent 1990s Los Angeles leading up to the L.A. riots.

Natalie Martinez (ABC’s Secrets & Lies) has been cast as the female lead in Fox’s drama pilot A.P.B., from writer David Slack and Sleepy Hollow co-creator/executive producer Len Wiseman. Inspired by the July New York Times Magazine article “Who Runs the Streets of New Orleans”, A.P.B. explores what happens when an enigmatic tech billionaire purchases a troubled police precinct in the wake of a loved one’s murder. Martinez will play Detective Amelia Murphy, "a wry, confident cop from a family of police, who never hesitates to question authority … which may be the reason she has alienated every CO she’s worked for and wound up stuck in the dysfunctional 13th Precinct."

Margot Robbie will star in Vaughn Stein’s noir thriller Terminal. Stein wrote the screenplay and will direct the film, which follows two hit men as they embark on a borderline suicide mission for a mysterious employer and a high paycheck. Along the way, the unlikely pair discover that a dynamic woman named Annie (Robbie) may be more involved than they had originally suspected.

Taye Diggs has landed a "pivotal, musical role" on NCIS' 300th episode. He'll play Marine Gunnery Sergeant Aaron Davis, a special operations sniper who was gravely injured and suffers extreme post traumatic stress after an ambush attack in Iraq.

Paget Brewster is returning to Criminal Minds to help the BAU catch an internati
onal killer in a springtime Season 11 episode. The former BAU team member-turned-Interpol Agent Emily Prentiss will enlist her Stateside friends to track an elusive serial killer, convinced that his next victim will be on American soil.

Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter), has been tapped as the lead of another ABC drama project, the legal drama Conviction. In case of a series order for Conviction and an improbable renewal of the Marvel drama, ABC sources indicate there is a scenario in which Atwell could possibly do both shows, potentially both as limited runs. In the new drama, Atwell will play Carter Morrison, the daughter of a former president who is blackmailed into becoming the head of Los Angeles' Conviction Integrity Unit. Along with a team of lawyers, investigators and forensic experts, she will examine cases in which the wrong person may have been convicted.

Yet another big name has quietly joined Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s upcoming new installment of his groundbreaking 1990 supernatural mystery series. Ashley Judd will be in the new season, slated for premiere on Showtime in early 2017. Also, it seems Lynch himself will reprise his role from the original series as Gordon Cole, with fellow co-creator/executive producer Mark Frost reportedly doing a cameo.

Are you wondering who is returning to the Twin Peaks sequel and who is not? Deadline has a (mostly) up-to-date roster for you.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

The latest Crime and Science Radio featured an interview with Bruce Houlihan, Director of the Orange County Crime Lab.

Debbi Mack Crime welcomed fiction author and weapons experts Ben Sobieck to the Crime Cafe podcast to talk about his latest writing.

Award-winning author Nicolette Pierce joined CrimeFiction.FM to discuss her Nadia Wolf romantic suspense series, which begins with the Big Blind.

Russell Blake joined the Meet the Thriller Author podcast to chat about his Justin Hall spy thriller series and more.

THEATER

Hardboiled: The Fall Of Sam Shadow by the Rhum and Clay company is the new production at the New Diorama in London. The play is both an homage to and parody of classic detective fiction that revolves around a rookie investigator daydreaming about becoming a hard-bitten hero - until the arrival of a femme fatale draws him into an investigation that erodes his optimism and turns him into the cynical protagonist he'd hoped to become. The production runs through February 27.

GAMES

Coming May 27 in formats for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC is the video game from Bigben Interactive and Frogwares:  Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter. Although details haven't been released about the game, it will apparently have five cases and be set in London. The game developer teased that "For the first time, the powers of analysis and composure of Sherlock Holmes will be shaken by emotion as he is caught between family, dark forces and powerful thirsts for vengeance."