Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for today:

TELEVISION

Starz has given an at 13-episode second season renewal to Outlander that will be based on the Diana Gabaldon novel “Dragonfly in Amber”. (Laura Prudom at Variety)

Actor Lee Tergeson (The Americans) will guest star in The Blacklist this fall, playing opposite recently announced guest star Mary-Louise Parker. They will play husband and wife Frank and Naomi Hyland. (Kaitlin Thomas at TV Guide and Natalie Abrams at Entertainment Weekly)

Actor Giles Marini (Switched at Birth) will guest star in this fall new NBC drama The Mysteries of Laura, that stars Debra Messing (Smash and Will & Grace) as a respected and successful homicide detective trying to juggle her demanding career with her duties as a divorced single mom to rambunctious twin boys. Marini will play a fashion designer with connections to a murder victim who ends up reinventing everyday mom Laura into a runway-ready fashion plate. (Robyn Ross at TV Guide)

Actress Bex Taylor-Klaus (Arrow and The Killing) has taken over one of the lead roles in the upcoming MTV small screen adaptation of the Scream franchise. She is replacing Amy Forsyth in the role of Audrey Jensen, the daughter of a Lutheran pastor and an artsy loner who aspires to be a filmmaker. Additionally, actor Bobby Campo (The Final Destination) will recur as Seth Branson, a hot English teacher; actor Connor Weil (Sharknado) will be a series regular playing Will Belmont, an all-American high school basketball player and actor Joel Gretsch (Witches of East End) will play Sheriff Clark Hudson, a good guy and good sheriff who is father to Kieran (series lead Amadeus Serafini). (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline and Lesley Goldberg at The Hollywood Reporter)

Actor Navid Negahban (Homeland) and Lauren Bowles (True Blood) will have recurring roles in the CW mid-season series The Messengers that centers on a group of seemingly unconnected strangers who die from an energy pulse after a mysterious object crashes down to Earth. They awaken to learn that they have been deemed responsible for preventing the impending apocalypse. Bowles will play Sen. Cindy Richards, a hard-working, passionate politician driven by a painful personal past while Negahban will play a Middle Eastern prime minister whose responsibility of keeping peace in his volatile country weighs heavily on him, and may force him to make some very unpopular decisions. (Lesley Goldberg at The Hollywood Reporter)

Actress Connie Nielson (The Following) will recur on The Good Wife this fall, playing Ramona, a smart, beautiful attorney with far-reaching Cook County connections. (Michael Ausiello at TV Line)

TV TEASER TRAILER

ONLINE SERIES NEWS

Actors Eddie Izzard (The Riches) and Noah Taylor (Game of Thrones) will co-star in the Sony Playstation Network series Powers that is based on the graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming. The series is set in a world full of people with superhuman abilities and where all of those powers are just another catalyst for mayhem and murder. Izzard will play Wolfe, the bogeyman of the POWERS universe, a top-level Power who has spent the last two decades incarcerated in the Shaft. Taylor will play Johnny Royalle, a criminal mastermind Power with the ability to pop in and out of locations at will. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Amazon is developing a Biblical drama called Promised Land that will take viewers into the book of Joshua in a sweeping tale told through the eyes of two brothers, one high born and the other a low level soldier. (Lacey Rose at The Hollywood Reporter)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Syfy is looking to potential produce a four-hour mini-series adaptation of the Arthur C. Clarke novel “Childhood’s End” that follows a peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival ends all war and turns the planet into a near-utopia. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

MINI-SERIES NEWS

Actor Jim Belushi (According To Jim), Terry Kinney (Oz), and Michael Stahl-David (Cloverfield) will star opposite actor Oscar Isaac and actress Catherine Keener in the upcoming six-hour HBO mini-series Show Me A Hero based on the non-fiction book by Lisa Belkin that tells the story of Nick Wasicsko (Isaac), the youngest big-city mayor in the nation who finds himself thrust into the center of a racial controversy when a federal court orders him to build a small number of low-income housing units in the white neighborhoods of his town, Yonkers, N.Y. Belushi will play six-term Yonkers Mayor Angelo R. Martinelli, who argued to comply with the judge’s order and lost his seat as a result. Kinney will play Peter Smith, the Yonkers Housing Authority’s director who waded through the political and bureaucratic morass to ensure that the public housing was built. Stahl-David will play James Surdoval, the political consultant who helped guide young Nick Wasicsko’s political career. (The Deadline Team)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Actress Edy Ganem (Devious Maids) has landed the lead role in the independent film called Ana Maria that will be about a receptionist who is obsessed with a telenovela. She suddenly finds herself transferred to the TV world of her beloved characters, where everyone thinks she is the fabulous and beautiful star of the show. (The Deadline Team)

Actress Malin Akerman (Watchmen) will co-star alongside actor Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) in the independent film called The Ticket about a sightless man (Stevens) who suddenly regains his vision only to be “blinded” by his obsession with the superficial. Akerman will play the wife Stevens’ character leaves after getting back his sight. (The Deadline Team)

Q&A SECTION (with Matt Mitovich at TV Line)

Question: As excited as I am for Once Upon a Time‘s Frozen storyline, I’m curious as to how The Knave (Michael Socha) is going to fit in in Storybrooke. Know anything about that? – Sarah

Mitovich: Do I! Just seconds before publishing this week’s Inside Line, I got off the horn with Once creators Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis, the former of which said that The Knave’s “background as Will Scarlett, who was one of the Merry Men and a thief, comes into play very early.” Kitsis then added that for Wonderland fans, “We will be explaining why he’s in town. I can also say that he fits rather nicely into Storybrooke, and his introduction is a really fun one.”

Question: Will Once Upon a Time’s Emma go house hunting or will she be living in that loft with Charming and Snow and a crying baby forever? –Shen

Mitovich: “Emma needs her own place, and we’d love for her to see it this year,” Eddy Kitsis agrees. And perhaps to that end, Adam Horowitz notes, “The domestic situation of the Charmings and Emma and Henry and Regina does fit into the early episodes.”

Question: Is Revenge really not doing a flash-forward this season? It’s the show’s signature. –Jason

Mitovich: I can confirm that – tradition be damned — there will not be a flash-forward in Revenge‘s Season 4 premiere, airing Sept. 28.

Question: Just curious, is the actress that played McGee’s girlfriend coming back to NCIS, or are they done? –Chris

Mitovich: Through production of Season 12 thus far, Big Bang alum Margo Harshman has yet to reprise her role as Delilah – though, as show boss Gary Glasberg promised, McGee’s complicated relationship has not been dropped. In fact, I’m hearing that Delilah has been referenced several times already.

Question: Will we see Colin Ferguson back on Haven? –lilslim

Mitovich: Outside of the “previously on” catch-up segment that opens up the Sept. 13 Season 5 premiere, no, you will not see William again – but make no mistake, his presence is very much felt through the first episodes.

Question: Is Nashville killing off Tandy? Judith Hoag tweeted that she’s leaving after Season 3’s second episode. —Chris

Mitovich: The show is not whacking Rayna’s sis, but the character will be written out in the Oct. 1 episode. I hear the door is being left open for Tandy to return at some point, though that seems unlikely (at least in the near future).

That’s it. Enjoy!

Have a great weekend!!