Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Still not a lot of news during this election week, but there were some interesting tidbits to share. Please read on:

MUSIC NEWS

There is an unconfirmed rumor that the album Glee The Music, Volume 4 will be released on November 30. Remember this is unconfirmed. (Twitter)

TELEVISION

Joan Allen has signed on for her first TV series, the upcoming HBO drama Luck. She will appear in a multi-episode arc in the series that examines the horse racing world through the owners, jockeys and gamblers. The cast includes Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte and Dennis Farina. Allen will portray a woman who runs a program that uses prison inmates to care for broken-down racehorses. (Deadline and Kate Stanhope at TV Guide)

Michaela McManus (One Tree Hill and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) will appear in a multi-episode arc on The Vampire Diaries, playing a gal pal of Mason’s (Tyler Kinney) who comes to Mystic Falls looking for her missing-in-action friend. (Movieline and Matt Mitovich at Fancast)

Kurtwood Smith (That 70’s Show) has joined the cast of the CBS midseason drama Chaos, replacing Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) in the role of a covert government agency director. The series stars Freddy Rodriguez as a rookie CIA operative assigned to spy on some fellow team members. (Deadline and Matt Mitovich at Fancast)

Craig Bierko (Cinderella Man and Damages) has been cast in the USA Network pilot Necessary Roughness. The pilot stars Callie Thorne (Rescue Me) as a psychologist who becomes the therapist for a professional football team. Bierko will play her estranged husband, Ray. The pilot also stars Mehcad Brooks (True Blood), Marc Blucas (Buffy, the Vampire Slayer), Scott Cohen (Gilmore Girls), Concetta Tomei (Providence) and Amanda Detmer (What About Brian). (Kate Stanhope at TV Guide)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

The USA Network has given pilot orders to three new shows: Eden, Wild Card and Over/Under. Eden is about a young hotel worker who, with the help of his escaped con artist cousin Eddie, gets a job as the concierge at an elite NYC hotel. Together they manage to provide the hotel guests with whatever they desire, at whatever the cost. Over/Under is about a day trader with a gambling problem who’s fired from his job six months after a bad trade costs his firm millions. Shut out of the job market, he and his wife retreat to a neighborhood on the cusp of gentrification. He finds an unlikely partner and starts to turn his life around in an unexpected way. Wild Card is a Las Vegas-set procedural about people behaving badly, and two very different lawyers. These pilots join the previously announced titles, A Legal Mind, Necessary Roughness and Common Law. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes) is back at NBC as the star/executive producer of Rest, a new drama project based on a comic book series he co-created. The story centers on John Barret (Ventimiglia), a normal twentysomething guy in New York City who spends every waking hour working. He enrolls in a testing program for a drug that eliminates the need of sleep and soon becomes addicted to it, which helps him accomplish more but also leads to serious consequences. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Cillian Murphy has joined Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver in the new film Red Lights. The story centers on a psychologist (Weaver), and her assistant, whose study of paranormal activity leads them to investigate a world-renowned psychic (De Niro). (Shock Til You Drop and First Showing)

Rachel Weisz will star in the movie The Deep Blue Sea, a period drama that stars Tom Hiddleston (Thor) and Simon Russell Beale (MI-5). The story is about a privileged housewife (Weisz) in 1950s London society who leaves her husband (Beale) for a young ex-Royal Air Force pilot (Hiddleston). The story is an adaptation of the 1952 stage play of the same name. (The Hollywood Reporter and First Showing)

Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones) has taken the title role in Effie, a biopic on Effie Gray, the wife of English art critic John Ruskin, who became entangled in a famous Victorian love triangle. Emma Thompson wrote the script and her husband Greg Wise and Orlando Bloom are to co-star. (Production Weekly Via Twitter Update and First Showing)

That’s it. Enjoy!