Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for today:

TELEVISION

Actor Miguel Ferrer (Crossing Jordan and the recently defunct Against the Wall) is joining the cast of NCIS: Los Angeles in a recurring role. He will play NCIS Assistant Director Allan Granger, a high-ranking federal agency supervisor. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Actor Carlos Bernard (24) has landed a recurring role on the TNT remake of Dallas that will air next summer. He will play a suave Venezuelan businessman trying to hammer out a deal with J.R. (Vulture)

Actress Torrey DeVitto (who happens to be the real-life wife of Paul Wesley) will appear on The Vampire Diaries in the recurring role of Mary, an intelligent young doctor intrigued by Alaric’s (Matt Davis) powers of recovery. (Lesley Goldberg at The Hollywood Reporter)

Actor Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings franchise) will make a guest appearance on Franklin & Bash play a college security guard who dons a cape and tights by night to fight campus crime under the name Viper. When he’s accused of killing a so-called culprit, he retains Franklin and Bash to defend him. (Michael Ausiello at TV Line)

Actor Kevin Alejandro (True Blood) will guest star in an episode of the A&E series Breakout Kings, playing Benecio Cruz, a tattooed, Latino religious obsessive, who is dying from Stage 4 lung cancer. Cruz escapes from Sing Sing and fighting to maintain his sanity with the aid of a pain patch, attempts to atone from his past crimes. (Lesley Goldberg at The Hollywood Reporter)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

CBS is planning on remaking the 1950’s/1960’s classic TV series The Rifleman with Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier writing the script and executive producing. The original series starred legendary actor Chuck Connors as a skilled gunman and widowed Civil War hero who moves to uncharted New Mexico territory to raise his young son and gets recruited by the sheriff to help protect the unruly town. (Variety)

Syfy has picked up three new potential projects (all scripted dramas). The first is an untitled project that has this tagline: After decades of war, the newly formed Unity Democracy orders a volatile mix of humans and trans-humans to lead the Starship Defender on an expedition in search of lost worlds requiring law and order. The second has the working title of Seeing Things and is about a cop who becomes a ghost after his violent death and the only person who can help close his last case is a socially awkward man who realizes that the hallucinations he’s had all his life may not be a figment of his imagination. The last is called Ghost Projekt and is based on the popular comic series about a female KGB agent and male American weapons inspector who form an unlikely partnership when a deadly force is unwittingly unleashed from a Siberian research facility. (TV By the Numbers)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

The casting is underway for the adaptation of the Stephenie Meyer novel The Host. Actress Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones) is already cast in the lead, but now it has been announced that actor Jake Abel (Supernatural and I Am Number Four) will play one of the two male leads. The other male lead role is still up in the air with the likes of Liam Hemsworth, Max Irons, Kit Harrington and Jai Courtney vying for the role. (First Showing)

Q&A SECTION (with Michael Ausiello at TV Line)

Question: Some Revenge scoop, please? —Sabrina

Ausiello: Some of the Hamptons’ stuffed shirts may start looking a little deflated after we meet over-the-top Mason Treadwell. He’s a fancy pants writer type whose book on the locals has made him as big a celebrity as any of the rich bitches he’s profiled.

That’s it. Enjoy!