Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for today:

TELEVISION

Actor Chris Klein (American Pie franchise) has landed a guest spot on an episode of Franklin & Bash, playing an old high school friend of Peter Bash (Mark-Paul Gosselaar). His character will be a charming politician who wants to end his gubernatorial bid after a family scandal. (Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide)

ABC Family has renewed veteran TV series The Secret Life of the American Teenager for a fifth season to become the longest-running series ever on ABC Family, hitting the 100-episode mark. (Deadline)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Actor David Conrad (The Ghost Whisperer) has joined the cast of the NBC drama pilot Beautiful People that is set in the near future in a society where humans co-exist with mechanical androids that look like people but are treated like second-class citizens. Conrad will play Jerry, the head of Universal Kinematics, a Steve Jobs-type of entrepreneurial genius, expert at both high-level design and higher-level marketing of sophisticated Mechanical servants. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Actress Jennifer Finnigan (Better with You) is the first cast member set for the David E. Kelley medical drama pilot called Chelsea General for TNT. The pilot is based on CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s upcoming novel “Monday Mornings” that follows the lives of five surgeons as they push the limits of their abilities and confront their personal and professional failings. Finnigan will play one of them, Dr. Tina Ridgeway, a neurosurgeon who has a fling with a fellow neurosurgeon. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Actress Kate Mara (American Horror Story) has been cast in Netflix’s first original series, the David Fincher drama called House Of Cards. The political thriller stars Kevin Spacey as Rep. Frank Underwood, the Majority Whip of the US House of Representatives who, after getting passed over for Secretary of State, hatches a plot to bring down the new President. Mara will play Zoe Barnes, a reporter for a top Washington newspaper who, desperate for a break, makes a deal with Underwood for a scoop that could cost her her soul. Also, actress Robin Wright will play Underwood’s wife. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Actors Cam Gigandet, Robert Knepper, William Fichtner, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Anson Mount and Freddy Rodríguez and actress Kathleen Robertson (among others) have joined the cast of the upcoming film called Code Name: Geronimo that follows the story of the Navy SEAL mission to kill Osama Bin Laden. (Screen Daily and Dark Horizons)

Actor John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone and Deadwood) will star alongside Mos Def in an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard 1978 crime novel “Switch”, which is a prequel to Leonard’s book “Rum Punch”, which was adapted into the 1997 feature film Jackie Brown. Hawkes and Def will play the younger versions of Louis Gara and Ordell Robbie, the characters Robert De Niro and Samuel L. Jackson played in Jackie Brown. In this film, Ordell and Louis team to kidnap Mickey Dawson, the wife of a corrupt Detroit real estate developer. When the husband refuses to pay the ransom for his wife’s return, the ex-cons are forced to reconceive their plan, and the angry housewife uses the duo to get her revenge. (Variety and Dark Horizons)

Actor Damian Lewis (Homeland) and Natascha McElhone (Ronin) are set to play Lord and Lady Capulet in the latest film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which will be set in the medieval time of the play (something that hasn’t been since the1968 version). Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth play the doomed lovers. Also among the cast are Stellan Skarsgard, Paul Giamatti, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Ed Westwick (among others). (Risky Biz Blog and Dark Horizons)

Actor Eric Bana and actress Rebecca Hall will play former lovers in an as-yet-untitled international thriller that is to center on a pair of old flames who find their lives at risk when they work together on a terrorism trial. (Brent Lang at The Wrap)

That’s it. Enjoy!