Who Says Hollywood Is Out of Ideas?

Virginia blogger-author B.V. Lawson keeps much better track of Hollywood deals and doings than I do. Which makes her weekly “Media Murder for Monday” posts among the most interesting elements of her blog, In Reference to Murder. Today, for instance, Lawson offers two tidbits of particular interest. First, this one:

Jay Hernandez (Scandal) has been tapped to play Thomas Magnum, the lead in CBS’ drama reboot pilot Magnum P.I. CBS had been looking to add a twist to the classic character played by Tom Selleck in the original series, which had been conceived as diverse in the reboot, with the network setting out to find a non-white actor for the role.

The reboot follows Thomas Magnum (Hernandez), a decorated ex-Navy SEAL who, upon returning home from Afghanistan, repurposes his military skills to become a private investigator. With help from fellow vets Theodore “TC” Calvin and Orville “Rick” Wright, as well as that of disavowed former MI:6 agent Juliet Higgins, Magnum takes on the cases no one else will, helping those who have no one else to turn to.

And then she has this news regarding plans to create a TV series inspired by James Ellroy’s 1990 crime novel, L.A. Confidential, and the 1997 film already developed from that book:

Sense8 alum Brian J. Smith has been cast as the lead in CBS’ drama pilot L.A. Confidential ... Directed by Michael Dinner, the TV series follows three homicide detectives, a female reporter and a Hollywood actress whose paths intersect as the detectives pursue a serial killer ... [in] gritty and glamorous 1950s Los Angeles. Smith is set to play Detective Ed Exley, the lead role played by Guy Pearce in 1997 that earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination. Cold, but not without a conscience, brilliant, fiercely ambitious, Ed Exley is an L.A. cop when the pilot story begins. Determined to make his mark and become a hero in his father’s eyes, Ed will do anything to prove himself.

Smith joins Justified’s Walton Goggins, who was recently cast as Detective Jack Vincennes.

If Lawson’s In Reference to Murder isn’t already on your list of blogs to check frequently, it really ought to be.