Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for today:

TELEVISION

Actress Chloe Sevigny (Big Love) will guest star in an upcoming episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, playing a stay-at-home mom who is attacked and kidnapped while video-chatting with her husband, who’s halfway around the world. (Adam Bryant at TV Guide)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Actress Kelly Bishop (Gilmore Girls) has joined the cast of the upcoming ABC Family drama Bunheads that comes from Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. In Bunheads, Tony winning actress Sutton Foster stars as a trained ballerina-turned-Vegas showgirl who impulsively marries a man, moves to his sleepy coastal town – Paradise, California – and assumes an uneasy role at her mother-in-law’s dance studio, the Paradise Dance Academy. Bishop will recur as said mother-in-law, Fanny. (Mandi Bierly at Entertainment Weekly)

Actress Ali Larter (Heroes) has landed the top role in the FOX spy dram pilot called The Asset. The pilot is described as a character-driven drama set in the CIA’s New York City station, focusing on a female agent with a very specialized and controversial area of expertise. (James Hibberd at Entertainment Weekly)

Actress Katie Cassidy (Gossip Girl, Melrose Place and Supernatural) and actress Willa Holland (Gossip Girl and The O.C.) have both been cast in The CW drama pilot called Arrow that will focus on the comic-book character Green Arrow (aka Oliver Queen). The series stars Stephen Amell (Hung and Private Practice) in the lead role. Cassidy will play Dinah “Laurel” Lance, a young attorney with the City Necessary Resources Initiative who shares a romantic past with Oliver while Holland will play Thea Queen, Oliver’s celebutante younger sister who’s testing the boundaries of acceptable behavior. The cast also includes Susanna Thompson (Once and Again and NCIS) as Oliver’s mom Moira Queen and David Ramsey (Dexter) as an ex-military/special forces type now working in private security for Oliver. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline and Michael Ausiello at TV Line)

Actress Kristin Kreuk (Smallville) has landed the lead role in The CW’s new drama pilot loosely based on the 1980’s Beauty and the Beast series. This new version will center on Catherine (Kreuk), a tough-minded NYPD Homicide Detective haunted by witnessing her mother’s murder 9 years ago and the killers’ quick demise at the hands of a Beast. After years of searching, Catherine finally finds the Beast, Vincent Koslow, the survivor of a military experiment that went disastrously wrong, and becomes the protector of his secret life as a bestial superhero. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Actress Dania Ramirez (Heroes) has been cast in one of the lead roles in the ABC pilot called Devious Maids that hails from Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry. The pilot is based on a Mexican series that follows four maids with ambition and dreams of their own while they work for the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. Ramirez will play Rosie, a single mother who left her son back in Mexico when her husband died, slipped into El Norte and now works as the housemaid/nanny for a pair of self-absorbed and successful actors. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Actor Steven Pasquale (Rescue Me) has landed the dual lead role in the NBC Jekyll & Hyde-style medical drama called Do No Harm that chronicles the life of Jeffrey Kohn (Pasquale), a brilliant neurosurgeon who wrestles with his dangerous alter-ego Ian Price that threatens to wreak havoc on his personal and professional life. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Actor Terry O’Quinn (Lost) has landed a lead role in the ABC supernatural drama pilot called 666 Park Avenue that is based on the Alloy book series by Gabriella Pierce. The pilot will center on a young couple who accept an offer to manage one of the most historic apartment buildings in New York City. Unwittingly, they begin to experience supernatural occurrences, which complicate and endanger the lives of everyone in the building. O’Quinn will play Gavin, the building’s owner. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Actors Laurence Fishburne and Kevin Zegers will star in the independent Canadian sci-fi feature called The Colony. Details on the film are few and far between, but reportedly it will follow a group of underground survivors after the next Ice Age, fending off an invasion of feral cannibals. (The Hollywood Reporter and First Showing)

Actresses Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts will star in the film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play by Tracy Letts called August: Osage County. The darkly comic movie focuses on the story of the women of the Weston family, who have grown apart from one another, but return to their house in the Midwest after a family crisis. Streep will play Violet Weston, the dysfunctional matriarch while Roberts will play her adult daughter, Barbara. (Joshua L. Weinstein at The Wrap)

That’s it. Enjoy!