Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

This week sure has gone by fast, hasn’t it? And, once again, the entertainment news isn’t too voluminous. I don’t know if that bodes well or not for next week, but we shall see, right?

In the meantime, here is what I found for today:

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

FX has put in development the first major series project centered on an illegal alien character. The potential series is to be about an illegal Mexican immigrant working as a private investigator. Part of the executive producer team will be Dawn Parouse and Marti Noxon. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Martin Sheen (The West Wing) has been cast as Uncle Ben in the upcoming Spider-Man reboot. Sally Field (Brothers & Sisters) is in early talks to play Aunt May. Already part of the cast is Emma Stone (Easy A) as Peter’s love interest, Gwen Stacy, Rhys Ifans as the film’s unnamed villain and Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. (The Hollywood Reporter and Gina DiNuzzo at TV Guide)

Dame Judi Dench is set to make a cameo in the box office film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The film apparently *SPOILERS ALERT* opens with Captain Jack (Johnny Depp) on trial for piracy in London’s Old Bailey before he escapes in a Keystone Cops-esque chase sequence through the city’s streets. Dench is to play a noblewoman in a carriage who is “ravished” by Captain Jack as part of his attempted escape. The cast of the movie already includes Geoffrey Rush, Penelope Cruz, Ian McShane and Keith Richards. (The Daily Mail and Dark Horizons)

Aaron Eckhart is set to star in the thriller The Expatriate, playing a CIA operative who leaves the agency to start a new life as a security consultant in Belgium and to spend time with his estranged teenage daughter. The pair soon end up on the run together when he discovers the security company no longer exists and his assistant is an assassin out to kill him. To make matters worse, his daughter doesn’t trust him when she learns of his past. (Deadline and Dark Horizons)

Bill Nighy (Love Actually) and Jackson Rathbone (The Twilight Saga) are negotiating to star in a 3D adaptation of the Peter Straub novel Shadowland. The story follows two young boys who spend a summer with a famous magician, who teaches them more than just harmless tricks but real sorcery. (Variety and First Showing)

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7 Reasons You Should Be Watching Season 3 of ‘Being Erica’

That’s it. Enjoy!

Have a great weekend!

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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!

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