Hey All,
Here are the entertainment news items for the past week:
RENEWALS
FOX has given Murder in a Small Town a third season renewal. (The Hollywood Reporter)
NBC has given Law & Order a renewal for its 26th (yep, you read that right!) season. (Deadline)
Hallmark+ has given its prequel series Hope Valley: 1874 a second season renewal. (Entertainment Now)
ABC has given a second season renewal to R.J. Decker (Variety)
HBO has given a second season order for the new Harry Potter small screen adaptation ahead of the first season’s Christmas premiere. (Deadline)
TV CASTING NEWS
James Marsden (Paradise) will star in the upcoming thriller series Disavowed at Apple TV that will follow legendary CIA Case Officer Brad Griffin (Marsden), who is abruptly fired in the middle of a global hunt for an elusive assassin responsible for killing his colleague. Disgraced and outcast from the world of intelligence, all bets are off when Brad decides to go after the 15 million dollar federal bounty on the assassin’s head. (Variety)
New cast members for the second season of the Amazon Prime series We Were Liars have been announced, including Once Upon a Time and Manifest alum Josh Dallas and Peyton List (The Rookie). They will play the younger versions of patriarch Harris and matriarch Tipper. (Deadline)
Lizzy Caplan (Masters of Sex and Party Down) has joined the upcoming 5th season of The Morning Show on Apple TV. She will play Gwen, a passionate and uncompromising Broadway theater director. (Deadline)
Veteran actor Peter Gallagher (The O.C. and Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist) has joined the cast of the upcoming third season of Murder in a Small Town on FOX. (Deadline)
The second season of the Nicole Kidman Amazon Prime drama Scarpetta has added the following to is cast David Arquette (the Scream franchise), Jodi Balfour (For All Mankind), William Zabka (Cobra Kai), Kim Dickens (Deadwood) and veteran actress Holland Taylor [among others]. There are no character details yet for these new cast members. (Deadline)
Will Patton (Falling Skies and Outer Range) will star opposite Matt Dillon in the upcoming drama The Magnificent Seven on MGM+, which will be a reimaging of the classic 1960 western film. Patton will play a new character to the series Cyrus T. Clemons, a confident, swaggering baron convinced of his own destiny in the 1880s American frontier-set series. (Deadline)
TV NEWS
The Netflix series The Night Agent will come to a close after its upcoming fourth season, which has added Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine), Annabeth Gish (Mystic Pizza and Mayfair Witches) and David Denman (The Office and Peacemaker) to the cast. Breslin will play Cahlin, a young FBI agent; Denman will playFord, a veteran CIA agent and former head of a Joint Terrorism Task Force and Gish will play Holland, an FBI agent who joins the DOJ investigation into Peter Sutherland (series lead Gabriel Basso). (Deadline)
FALL TV NEWS
FOX is rebooting the classic 80’s TV series Highway To Heaven. The plan is to keep the original show’s uplifting, emotional storytelling and themes of compassion, humanity and second chances while putting an original spin on its premise of a “probationary angel,” who is sent to Earth to earn his wings by helping people in need. Friday Night Lights creator Jason Katims will be at the helm of the series. (Deadline)
NBC is also moving forward with a reboot of The Rockford Files with Angel and SEAL Team star David Boreanaz in the lead role and 9-1-1 star Peter Krause taking the lead in the new drama Line of Fire. (Deadline)
DEVELOPMENT NEWS
This Is Us star Mandy Moore is expected to star in and executive produce an as-yet titled HBO Max drama that tells the story of two families coming together against incredible odds and discovering a newfound extended family that they never could have imagined. The role of one of the parents is intended for Moore, sources said. (Deadline)
BOX OFFICE NEWS
Downton Abbey alum Laura Carmichael and Nobody Wants This and The O.C. alum Adam Brody will star in the upcoming film A Night at Claridge’s (this is the working title), which will be based on the 1947 novel The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton, which will be set in the south of England in 1943, just before D-Day, when a small town is filled with American soldiers. It will follow Miss Roach (Carmichael), a publisher’s reader. After being bombed out of her London flat, Miss Roach moves to a small town where she finds lodgings at a guest house alongside Mr Thwaites, who delights in bullying her, and Vicki, a German woman. However, Miss Roach’s friendship with Vicki is soon tested by the arrival of American officer Lt. Dayton Pike, with the pair vying for his affections. (Digital Spy)
Oscar winner Brendan Fraser will star in the upcoming cosmic sci-fi thriller Starman, playing visionary technologist Tom Adams, an architect of the future, who launches a historic expedition to Mars, positioning himself at the forefront of humanity’s next frontier. But when unforeseen events find him millions of miles from Earth, his mission becomes an unexpected and urgent race against time, driven not by survival alone but by love. (Deadline)
The Superman sequel Man Of Tomorrow has added Matthew Lillard (Cross and Scooby Doo) to its cast, but there are no details as to who he will play. (Deadline)
Looks like there just might be another Hocus Pocus movie coming from Disney, but the project is still in its infancy so there’s not too much to tell other than Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy are expecting to reprise their roles as the Sanderson sisters. (Deadline)
Priyanka Chopra Jonas (Citadel) and Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings franchise) will star in the upcoming survival thriller flick Reset that will follow a woman (Chopra Jonas) who wakes up in the middle of the wilderness days from civilization with no memory of how she got there, finding that her only chance at survival is to trust a charming stranger (Bloom), who may not be who he says he is. (Deadline)
Gerard Butler (Greenland and Plane) will appear in a new action-thriller flick, playing a sniper who receives an anonymous threat over the radio and must race against a ticking clock in order to save his family and 70,000 fans at the biggest sporting event on the globe: the World Cup. (Deadline)
Bridgerton and Wicked hunk Jonathan Bailey will star alongside Natalie Portman in the upcoming psychological thriller flick Pumping Black that follows cyclist Taylor Mace, who at 35-years-old is finding himself aging out of the sport. He is taken under the wing of Andrea Lathe, a doctor driven by her own thirst for victory and power. As the race to the Tour de France progresses, Taylor must take increasingly dark measures to protect his secret. (Variety)
That’s it. Enjoy!
Rueben's Ramblings 