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."