Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for the past week:

CASTING NEWS

Actress Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) will have a recurring role in The Flash, playing DC Comics villain Amunet Black, (aka Blacksmith), a steely and badass boss of an underground black market for supervillains. (Entertainment Weekly)

Actress Rachelle Lefevre (Under the Dome) will join the cast of the Lifetime series Mary Kills People for its second season, playing Olivia Bloom, a mysterious woman with ties to Mary’s (series lead Caroline Dhavernas) past. (Global Television Press Release)

Actress Ivana Milicevic (Banshee) will appear in The CW series The 100 in the recurring role of Charmaine Diyoza, one of the mysterious criminals aboard the prisoner ship that was seen in the season finale. (TV Line)

Actress Laura Vandervoort (Bitten) has joined the cast of the AT&T Audience Network series Ice where she will recur as Tessa Pryor, a legal eagle who arrives at court to represent veteran diamond dealer Freddy Green (series lead Jeremy Sisto). (TV Line)

Actress Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Expanse) has joined the cast of the Netflix streaming series The Punisher in the recurring role of Farah Madani, the mother of Dinah Madani, a skilled Homeland Security agent who’s vexed by the Punisher, a.k.a. Frank Castle (series lead Jon Bernthal). (Entertainment Weekly)

Actress Melina Kanakaredes (CSI: NY and Providence) has joined the cast of the new, upcoming FOX medical drama The Resident, which centers on a tough, brilliant senior resident who guides an idealistic young doctor through his first day, pulling back the curtain on what really happens, both good and bad, in modern-day medicine. Kanakaredes will play Dr. Lane Hunter, the top oncologist in the state of Georgia. The cast of The Resident includes Matt Czuchry (Gilmore Girls and The Good Wife) and Emily VanCamp (Revenge) [among others]. (Deadline)

Actors Michael Irby (Taken) and Jay Hayden (The Catch) and actress Alona Tal (Hand of God and Supernatural) have landed recurring roles in the new, upcoming CBS military drama SEAL Team that stars David Boreanaz (Bones and Angel) and Max Thieriot (Bates Motel). The series follows the professional and personal lives of the most elite unit of Navy SEALs as they train, plan and execute the most dangerous, high stakes missions our country can ask of them. Irby will play Adam, a senior among the Green Team instructors and a once-legendary who oversees the Green Team’s drills. Hayden will portray Brian, a Green Team trainee while Tal will play Stella, a grad student who meets Clay (Thieriot) in a bar where SEALs tend to hang out. (Deadline)

Actress Anna Diop (24: Legacy) has landed a lead role in the new live-action series Titans that will follows a group of young soon-to-be superheroes recruited from every corner of the DC Universe. She will play the role of Starfire, an alien princess from a warrior planet who seeks asylum on Earth. (Deadline)

British actor Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey) and Aussie actress Teresa Palmer (Hacksaw Ridge) will star in the lead roles of Matthew and Diana in the small screen adaptation of the best-selling novel “A Discovery of Witches” by Deborah Harkness. The story follows Diana Bishop, a science historian who also just happens to be a witch with a troubling past that has led her to suppress her magical tendencies. When her research leads her to uncover a mysterious missing manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, she sets in motion a series of events that will lead her on an adventure across time and continents to discover the secrets of her past and the truth about the origin of magical beings (which includes witches, vampires, and daemons). Along the way, Diana also encounters and falls in love with Matthew Clairmont, a scientist and vampire with a murky past of his own. An official home for the series in the U.S. has yet to be announced. (Entertainment Weekly)

Actor Common (Hell on Wheels) will play the lead role in the new Starz series based on the “Black Samurai” books that follow Robert Sand, a highly-trained American Army Ranger whose life is transformed when he meets a legendary Japanese master who invites him to train as a samurai. After his beloved sensei and samurai brothers are killed by mercenaries, Sand is thrust on a worldwide journey of both revenge and self-discovery. (Variety)

Actor Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings franchise) will play the lead role in the upcoming Amazon drama series Carnival Row that takes place in a neo-Victorian city in which mythical creatures, fleeing their war-torn homeland, have gathered. Tensions are simmering between citizens and the growing immigrant population. Bloom will play Rycroft Philostrate, a police inspector investigating the murder of a faerie showgirl on Carnival Row. The show has been ordered for an eight-episode first season. (Variety)

Actor Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Dracula and Emerald City) has joined the cast of The Haunting Of Hill House, the Netflix modern re-imagining of Shirley Jackson’s classic 1959 novel. The cast already includes Timothy Hutton (Leverage), Carla Gugino (Wayward Pines), Michel Huisman (Game of Thrones), and Elizabeth Reaser (the Twilight franchise) [among others]. The 10-episode straight-to-series drama will draw from the original classic ghost story while expanding on the mythology of the Crane family. No character information is being revealed at this time. (Deadline)

MOVIE NEWS

It looks like Warner Bros. is developing an untitled tent-pole movie to star Jared Leto and Margot Robbie as Joke and Harley Quinn respectively, reprising their roles from Suicide Squad. (Variety)

Young actress Sophie Nelisse (The Book Thief), Eoin Macken (The Night Shift and Merlin) and Indira Varma (Game of Thrones) will star with Noomi Rapace in the action thriller Close that will loosely be based on the experiences of Jacqui Davis, one of the world’s leading female bodyguards. The film will center on Sam (Rapace) a close protection officer used to battlefield conditions, who is hired to protect Zoe (Nélisse), a rebellious heiress to a billion-dollar company. When a violent kidnapping attempt forces them to go on the run, the women form an unlikely bond, and with the help of Sam’s ex-partner Conall (Macken) work together to clear their names and uncover their enemies. Varma will Zoe’s stepmother. (Deadline)

TRAILER

The Shannara Chronicles Season Two

That’s it. Enjoy!