Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Happy Thursday Everybody! Let’s get right into today’s news, shall we?:

TELEVISION

Actor Kevin Alejandro (Southland and True Blood) will play Hercules Maldanado (aka The Tornado) in the season finale of Bones. Hercules is said to be a flashy, arrogant man obsessed with bowling, but his skills don’t match up. He’s sort of his team’s dead weight. (William Keck at TV Guide)

The BBC America will debut the new sci-fi drama Outcasts on June 18 at 9 PM. The series stars
Eric Mabius (Ugly Betty), Liam Cunningham (Clash Of The Titans) and Hermione Norris (MI-5) and Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica. The series takes viewers into a new world as it explores survival, sex, politics and the drive for power in a new post-Earth era. (The Futon Critic)

The other new BBC America drama Bedlam will debut on October 8 at 9 PM. The series is set in Bedlam Heights, an apartment building converted from a pre-Victorian lunatic asylum where the inhabitants experience the darker side of the building’s history when former asylum spirits come back to claim what they believe to be theirs and seek revenge on those who have wronged them. The series stars singer and actor Will Young (Pop Idol and Skins), Charlotte Salt (The Tudors) and Joanna Page (Gavin & Stacey). (The Futon Critic)

The cable network A&E has announced the season 2 premiere date for The Glades: June 5 at 10 PM. Mark your calendars! (Twitter)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Chris Colfer (Glee) has penned a pilot that the Disney Channel is about to shoot. The project is called The Little Leftover Witch, which is based on a children’s book of the same name by Florence Laughlin. The series (if picked up by the cable network) would be about a little witch who was taken in by a family after crash-landing from her broom. (Nikki Finke at Deadline)

The recent Pulitzer Prize winning book A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan has been purchased by HBO with the intentions of making the “sprawling tale” into a TV series. The book focuses on a coterie of characters first introduced as they orbit the world of punk rock in 1980s San Francisco. Their lives are explored for the next 30 or so years, with interlocking stories that deal as much with changes in the lives of the characters as it does changes in technology. (Mike Fleming at Deadline)

Cuban-born actress Marlene Forte (Crossing Jordan and House of Payne) has landed the final role on the TNT pilot (reboot of) Dallas. She will play Carmen, the Ewing family’s longtime housekeeper, whose daughter, Elena (Jordana Brewster), enjoys a friendship with Ewing cousins John Ross (Josh Henderson) and Christopher (Jesse Metcalfe). (William Keck at TV Guide)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

20th Century Fox has scored the film rights to an upcoming trilogy of young adult science fiction novels by author Alexandra Bracken that are set in a time when a mysterious virus has left most American children dead. The few kids that have survived have developed psychic powers. One of them is a 16-year-old girl named Ruby who has been living in a government-run “rehabilitation camp” for six years. The first book, “Black is the Color”, sees Ruby joining forces with a small band of escapees who have a secret mission of their own. Anarchist organizations hunt Ruby for their own purposes, while a leader named ‘The Slip Kid’ who offers shelter to young people in danger turns out to not be all that he seems. (Variety and Dark Horizons)

Actor Jonas Armstrong (the BBC series Robin Hood), British acting veteran Stephen Dillane and actress Parminder Nagra (Bend It Like Beckham and ER) will appear in the London-based thriller called Twenty8k. Nagra will appear as a fashion executive who returns to London from Paris after her brother lands up in jail after a fatal gang shooting. She then tries to unravel what happened to her brother and becomes immersed in police corruption and gangland danger. (The Hollywood Reporter and Dark Horizons)

Actors Julia Stiles, Taye Diggs and Melissa George will star in the film called Between Us that is an adaptation of the Joe Hortua off-Broadway play. The story follows two couples who were friends in school and whose periodic meetings conjure up rivalries and bitterness over unrealized ambitions that get waylaid by money and children. (Deadline and Dark Horizons)

Rather than appearing in the upcoming film The Great Gatsby, actor-director Ben Affleck is will helm and star in a film called Argo, which is based on the intriguing true story of how the CIA used a fake sci-fi film to rescue Americans during the Tehran hostage crisis. (Deadline and First Showing)

It is rumored that actress Kate Beckinsale (Underworld franchise) by appear in the remake of the film Total Recall that already includes actors Colin Farrell and Bryan Cranston. Meanwhile, actresses Eva Mendes and Rosario Dawson are the top contenders for a separate role in the film. (Deadline and First Showing)

Actors Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin are in talks to star in the mob film called Gangster Squad that is about Mickey Cohen, the Brooklyn-born gangster who was sent to Los Angeles by Meyer Lansky to keep an eye on Bugsy Siegel. Cohen became a mob kingpin himself in the 1940s, and at one point fired rounds from two .45-caliber handguns into the ceiling of the Hotel Roosevelt lobby. Penn is in talks to play Cohen. Brolin and Gosling are in negotiations to play police officers who go after Cohen. (Deadline and The Wrap)

BOX OFFICE TRAILERS

Freddie Highmore in the Official Trailer for ‘The Art Of Getting By’

Official Trailer for Sundance Sensation Mike Cahill’s ‘Another Earth’

Must Watch: New Trailer for Richard Ayoade’s Indie Fave ‘Submarine’

That’s it. Enjoy!