Hitting Screens, Jan. 10 thru 15
After the flurry of releases timed to the awards season cut-off, only one movie based on a book premieres in the upcoming week (The Revenant, which debuted in a very few theaters last month, opens wide today amid buzz for Sunday’s Golden Globes). TV takes up the slack with one movie and a new series.
Opening next Friday, January 15, is 
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi based on 13 Hours: The Inside Account Of What Really Happened In Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff (Hachette/Twelve trade paperback tie-in; also mass-market). Opening the same weekend that American Sniper did last year, the producers are hoping for similar magic.
The movie revisits an event with heavy political implications, explored by the New York Times although director Michael Bey and the producers, “shared the conviction … that partisan politics should generally be avoided,” focusing instead on “an unabashed celebration of the armed operatives, who were defying orders when they moved to defend the diplomatic compound.”
Starring John Krasinski and James Badge Dale, the release of the trailer, as we previously reported, was enough to send the book moving up Amazon’s sales rankings. This week it hit the NYT Nonfiction paperback list at #8.
On TV, the Hallmark channel debuts the next in the Murder She Baked series, The Peach Cobbler Murder this Sunday, January 10.
Also airing back-to-back on Sunday are the previous two titles in the series based on Joanna Fluke’s Hannah Swensen series.
Tie-ins have been published for all three:
Peach Cobbler Murder, Joanne Fluke, (Kensingon, trade pbk and mass market)
Plum Pudding Mystery, Joanne Fluke, (Kensingon, trade pbk and mass market. Sept 2015)
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, Joanne Fluke, (Kensington, April, 2015)
As a result of the success of the series, Kensington is re-releasing Fluke’s backlist. The next book in the Hannah Swensen series, Wedding Cake Murder is coming in February.
The seven-episode Shadowhunters series premiers on Jan. 12.
Based on Cassandra Clare’s YA series, The Mortal Instruments, it airs at 9 p.m. on the Freeform network (formerly ABC Family). A tie-in edition came out in late December, City of Bones: TV Tie-In (S&S/Margaret K. McElderry).
This is not the first time Clare’s book has been adapted. As we reported earlier, it was made into a movie in 2013. After it flopped at the box office, the producers changed their plans of creating a film franchise and turned to TV, with a new cast of actors, all of whom are fairly new to the screen.
For those not familiar with the story, E! Online offers a Shadowhunters 101.