Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for today:

TELEVISION

BBC One is moving ahead with an eight-episode series loosely based on the Emile Zola novel Au Bonheur Des Dames. The series will be called The Ladies’ Paradise and will be set in England’s first department store. It will follow the rags-to-riches story of Denise Lovett, a young girl who works in the store and gets caught up in the charms of the modern world. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Actor Jesse Plemons (Friday Night Lights) has landed a major recurring role on the upcoming fifth season of Breaking Bad. He will play Todd, a dependable, innocuous, working-class guy, but his character may not be what he appears to be. (Michael Ausiello at TV Line)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Actors Sam Claflin, Matthew Goode and Tom Wilkinson as well as actresses Miranda Richardson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sarah Gadon and Emily Watson have all joined the cast of the upcoming film Belle, a biopic of Dido Elizabeth Belle. Dido (Mbatha-Raw) was the half-black illegitimate daughter of renowned Admiral Sir John Lindsay, who was eventually taken in and raised as an aristocratic lady in 18th Century England by Lindsay’s uncle William Murray, the Earl of Mansfield. Gadon and Claflin will play Belle’s cousin and love interest respectively, but no other cast details are known. (Screen Daily and Dark Horizons)

Actress Keira Knightley will replace Scarlett Johansson in the upcoming film Can A Song Save Your Life?, where she will play a singer who moves to New York with her boyfriend only to be dumped by him and subsequently discovered by a producer. Hailee Steinfeld also stars. (Screen Daily and Dark Horizons)

Actor Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia!) will star opposite Pierce Brosnan in the long-gestating dream project called November Man. The film is an espionage action-thriller based on the Bill Granger novel There are No Spies. Brosnan would play an ex-CIA operative who finds himself pitted against his former pupil (Cooper) in a deadly game involving high-level CIA officials and the Russian president-elect. (The Hollywood Reporter and Dark Horizons)

Actress Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan and The Hunger Games) will play the lead role in the remake of the remake of the 70’s horror classic Suspiria, which follows a young girl who travels to Europe to attend a world-renowned school, only to learn that the academy is a front for a coven of witches. (Variety and Dark Horizons)

Actor James Badge Dale (24 and Rubicon) has joined the cast of Iron Man 3. He will play a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army put in charge of Project: Ultra. After stepping on a land mine, cybernetic surgery is performed on him and he’s resurrected as the cyborg Coldblood. (Variety and Coming Soon)

BOX OFFICE TRAILER

Maggie Gyllenhaal & Viola Davis in First Trailer for ‘Won’t Back Down’

That’s it. Enjoy!