Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items from Friday and today:

TELEVISION

Actor Grant Gustin (Glee) has been cast in the role of Barry Allen, aka The Flash on The CW series Arrow. (Jenna Busch at Fanhattan)

BET has quietly given the soon-to-be-regular-series Being Mary Jane a second season order before the debut season has event aired, which will be sometime early next year. The 90-minute pilot aired this past July, starring actress Gabrielle Union as a successful TV news anchor. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Actor Danny Glover will guest star in an episode of the new remake series Ironside, playing Frank Ironside, Robert’s father. He will appear in a flashback sequence. (The Futon Critic)

Actor James Tupper (Revenge and Men in Trees) has joined the cast of the ABC mid-season series Resurrection for a multi-episode arc, playing Dr. Eric Ward. Little else is known about his character at this time. (Michael Ausiello at TV Line)

Actors Powers Boothe and Robert Ray Wisdom will NOT be returning as series regular on Nashville when it returns for its second season on ABC starting on September 25. (Michael Ausiello at TV Line)

Singer Iggy Pop will now voice the character of The Caterpillar in the spin-off series Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. It seems that singer Roger Daltrey, who originally provided the voice wasn’t available. (James Hibberd at Entertainment Weekly)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

FOX is developing a new drama called The Middle Man from executive producer Ben Affleck and Glenn Gordon Caron (the man behind Medium and Moonlighting) that will be set in 1960s Boston, exploring the unique relationship between Rudy MacAteer, an FBI agent charged with taking down the Italian-American mafia, and his confidential informant, Irish-American gangster Mickey Flood. (FOX Press Release)

MTV has ordered two hour-long pilots. The first being Finder Carter, an unconventional family drama about a girl realizing that sometimes the people closest to you are the ones who have the most to hide. It centers on teenage Carter, who has the perfect life with her fun-loving single mom Lori until a police bust at a high school party reveals that Lori abducted her as a toddler. Now Carter must return to the family who thought they had lost her. As she navigates brand-new parents, a twin sister, high school and boys, Carter vows to find Lori before the police capture the only mom she’s ever known and put her behind bars. The other drama is called Eye Candy and is based on the R.L. Stine’s novel. It will center on tech genius Lindy, who is persuaded by her roommate to begin online dating and begins to suspect that one of her mysterious suitors might be a deadly cyber stalker. When her friends at the elusive cyber-police uncover a potential serial killer in Manhattan, all signs point to one of Lindy’s dates. Teaming up with this band of hackers, Lindy works to solve the murders while unleashing her own style of justice on the streets of New York City. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Carnival Films (the London based company behind Downton Abbey) is working on a drama project that will be seen through the eyes of Winston Churchill and based on the Michael Sheldon novel called “Young Titan”, telling the story of Churchill’s early career from 1901 to 1915 at the height of England’s imperial glory. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

ABC is developing a new drama project called The Thirteen, a contemporary drama that takes place in a world in which the 13 colonies lost their bid for independence and America is still fighting the British for freedom. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Actress Lisa Edelstein (House) will have the starring role in the Bravo adaptation of the Vicki Iovine book “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce” that will be executive produced by Marti Noxon. The hour-long dramedy will follow best-selling author of a self-help book series, Vicki (Edelstein), who is secretly hiding her separation from her husband and starts to navigate her life as a single woman in her 40s in Los Angeles. She begins to side with and take advice more often from her divorced friends rather than her married ones, and it leads her to some unexpected life-changing experiences. (Lesley Goldberg at The Hollywood Reporter)

NBC is developing a drama series called Conspiracy based on the Christopher MacBridge 2012 found footage-style indie feature that centers on a conspiracy theorist who vanishes after a man is killed at an Occupy Wall Street protest, leaving behind his sister and an FBI agent to investigate. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

FOX is working on a drama series called Unthinkable based on the comic book series that tells the story of the unlikely pairing of a by-the-book FBI agent and a washed-up screenwriter who team up to stop a plot to attack the U.S. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

MADE-FOR-TV MOVIE NEWS

Lifetime has given a green light to a made-for-TV movie about Gabby Douglas, the first African-American gymnast in Olympic history to become the Individual All-Around Champion and the first American gymnast to win gold in both the gymnastic individual all-around and team competitions at the same Olympic Games. The cast will include Imani Hakim (Everybody Hates Chris) and Sydney Mikayla as the two-time Olympic gold medalist, Regina King (Southland) as her mother and S. Epatha Merkerson (Law & Order) as her grandmother. Mikayla will portray Douglas during her childhood while Hakim will play her as a teenager and young adult. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Tony Award-winning veterans Audra McDonald (Private Practice), Laura Benanti (Royal Pains) and Christian Borle (Smash) have joined the cast of the NBC live production of The Sound of Music that will air on December 5. McDonald will portray Mother Abbess, the head of Nonnberg Abbey while Benanti will play Elsa Schrader, Captain Von Trapp’s rich would-be fiancée, and Borle will play Max Dettweiler, Captain Von Trapp’s friend. The cast also includes the previously announced Stephen Moyer (True Blood) as Capt. Georg Von Trapp and country singer Carrie Underwood) as Maria. (Philiana Ng at The Hollywood Reporter)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Here’s the Top Ten list based on weekend estimates courtesy of Deadline and Box Office Mojo:

1. Insidious: Chapter 2 – 41 million
2. The Family – 14.5 million
3. Riddick – 7 million
4. The Butler – 5.9 million
5. We’re The Millers – 5.4 million
6. Instructions Not Included – 4.3 million
7. Planes 3D – 3 million
8. One Direction: This Is Us 3D – 2.4 million
9. Elysium – 2 million
10. Percy Jackson 2 – 1.8 million

Actresses Julianne Moore and Lily Rabe (American Horror Story) have both joined the cast of the Hunger Games third film Mockingjay (that will be seen in two parts). Moore will play President Alma Coin, the leader of the rebellion against the Capitol while Rabe will play Commander Lyme, one of the leaders of the Rebellion at District 13. (The Deadline Team and Mike Fleming, Jr. at Deadline)

BOX OFFICE TRAILER

Hot Trailer: Grace Of Monaco

Q&A SECTION (with Matt Roush from TV Guide)

Question: Not to pester you on the abrupt cancellation of The Glades, but exactly what happened? Also, is it expecting too much from a cable channel or broadcast network to allow a multi-year series to have a proper resolution or ending? Lastly, is there any chance another cable channel — like sister LMN or USA or TNT or even Netflix — picking up The Glades up for a fifth season or two-hour wrap-up episode? — Jim

Matt Roush: Cancellations like these are basically business decisions that involve a calculus of slipping ratings, cost analysis and the network’s future goals (as in, maybe A&E is developing something that might be a better fit with Longmire). But these tough calls also involve a creative component, and someone really dropped the ball here by allowing the show, if it was seen as being in any ratings jeopardy, to end the season on such a downbeat cliffhanger. It’s inexcusable. As far as I can tell, there’s no news about the producing studio shopping the property around to other channels, and I’d think it unlikely to be picked up elsewhere (such things happen very rarely), so the best hope is that A&E has a change of heart and decides to film a wrap-up of some sort. But until you hear of such a thing happening, assume that it won’t.

That’s it. Enjoy!

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