Hey All,
Here are the entertainment news items for this past week:
RENEWAL
Acorn TV has given the Brooke Shields-led drama You’re Killing Me a second season order. (Deadline)
BOX OFFICE NEWS
The upcoming Western feature film Blood on the Promontory has set Sam Worthington, Jai Courtney, Jack Quaid and LaMonica Garrett for starring roles, but their character details are being kept under wraps. The movie will find five convicts trying to escape through the mountains following a violent train robbery, while shackled together by foot. (Deadline)
Andie MacDowell and Kevin Bacon will appear in the upcoming box office movie Beach Read, which will be an adaptation of the best-selling novel by Emily Henry that will star Phoebe Dynevor and Patrick Schwarzenegger in the lead roles. The movie is a romantic comedy that will follow January Andrews, a successful romance novelist who struggles with grief and writer’s block after her father’s death and the discovery of secrets he’s long kept hidden. While spending the summer in his Michigan beach house to prepare it for sale, she unexpectedly reconnects with Gus Everett, an author who was once her rival in college. Both creatively stuck, they agree to a writing challenge over the summer, swapping literary genres while promising that there will be no romance between them. Of course, you know what they say about the best-laid plans. (Deadline)
TV CASTING NEWS
Young actress Willa Dunn (Only Murders in the Building) will play Nellie Oleson in the reboot of Little House on the Prairie for the show’s second season, but this version of that antagonistic character will be taken in a slightly different approach. On the surface, Nellie is a world-class spoiled princess and a playground bully. Smart and supremely confident, sharp-tongued but easily wounded. Lives and breathes to make Laura Ingalls miserable. But beneath her mean-girl persona is tenderness and a yearning for true friendship — even if she doesn’t know exactly how to get it. (Deadline)
Jon Tenney will star opposite Olivia Colman and Brie Larson in the upcoming FX limited series Cry Wolf that is inspired by the Danish series Ulven Kommer. It will be a a psychological family thriller following a social worker, Kath (Colman), and a mother, April (Larson), thrust into crisis when the mother’s teenage daughter, Mia (Alyvia Alyn Lind), alleges abuse, pushing both women to their limits as they navigate an impossible situation. Tenney will play Ian Farr, polished, handsome, slick and smart as a whip. He’s ruthless and one step ahead of everyone else, able to control an entire courtroom and destroy the opposing council with ease. A former criminal defense attorney, he now sees himself as a champion for fathers after his own bitter divorce, which made him a “found man” with a whole new belief system. He masterfully controls the courtroom in the show’s climactic trial. (Deadline)
Looks like Downton Abbey alum Joanne Froggatt is in final talks to join the MGM+ TV western remake of The Magnificient Seven where she is set to play the leader of the Quaker group under siege. (Deadline)
Battlestar Galactica alum Mary McDonnell has joined the cast of the upcoming FOX reboot of Baywatch in which she will play Gayle, the mom of Hobie Buchannon now played by Arrow hunk Stephen Amell, a sophisticated woman with a wryly funny presence. She cares deeply for her family and is there for them even when they’re not sure they want her help. Gayle and Hobie have a long, complicated history, but no matter how much time or distance gets between them, family always seems to find its way back together. Also, OG cast members Michael Bergin and Kelly Packard will be returning to the show to reprise their roles of lifeguards Jack “J.D.” Darius and April Giminski. (Deadline and Variety)
In happy news for fans of the long-running Canadian police drama Hudson & Rex, original lead actor John Reardon will be returning for the show’s 9th season. Season 8 of the series which features new lead actor Luke Roberts will debut here in the States on UP Faith & Family starting on June 11. (TV Insider)
Monk star Tony Shalhoub has joined this fall’s new drama Einstein, which will debut on CBS. The series will follow Lewis Einstein (Matthew Gray Gubler), the brilliant but directionless great-grandson of Albert Einstein, who spends his days as a comfortably tenured professor until his bad-boy antics land him in trouble with the law, and he is pressed into service helping Teri (Melissa Fumero), a local police detective, solve her most puzzling cases. Shalhoub will play the recurring character of Jack Einstein, Lewis’s father. (Deadline)
TV DEVELOPMENT NEWS
A TV drama chronicling the early life of Canadian megastar Celine Dion and her family is in the works. The working title of the show, Growin Up Dion will trace her childhood in Quebec and her formative years growing up in a modest, music-filled household, where her bond with her mother Thérèse and close-knit dynamic of 14 sibling relationships shaped her path to global superstardom. (Deadline)
That’s it. Enjoy!
Rueben's Ramblings 