Hey All,
Here is the entertainment news for the past week:
RENEWALS/CANCELLATIONS
Good Cop has been cancelled by Netflix after one season. (Variety)
Bosch has been given a season 6 renewal by Amazon. (Variety)
ABC has renewed Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a 7th season before the show’s 6th season is even set to air in early 2019. The surprising (or not) news is that actor Clark Gregg is not listed as a cast member for the 7th season. Roh, roh! (Variety)
PICK UP ORDERS
Netflix has landed the directorial debut The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave). The film will be based on the best-selling book by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer that follows 13-year-old boy William who finds a way to save his village in Malawi from famine. (Variety)
Working Title and Netflix are developing a new version of Rebecca, the 1938 gothic thriller by Daphne du Maurier that follows a young woman who comes to live with her new wealthy husband in his estate on the coast of England and finds herself struggling to fight against the legacy of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, a mysterious and beautiful woman whose influence continues to haunt the house and its denizens. Cinderella star Lily James and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. alum Armie Hammer will star in the lead roles. (Entertainment Weekly)
CASTING NEWS
Actor Hugh Grant will star opposite Nicole Kidman in the upcoming HBO limited series The Undoing, based on the book You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz. The 6-episode series centers on Grace Sachs (Kidman), who is living the only life she ever wanted for herself. She’s a successful therapist, has a devoted husband, Jonathan (Grant), and young son who attends an elite private school in New York City. Overnight a chasm opens in her life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself. Jonathan is described as an acclaimed pediatric oncologist, devoted husband to Grace and doting father, whose past undergoes scrutiny when he suddenly disappears, leading to a chain of terrible revelations. (Variety)
More cast members have joined next summer’s new season of Veronica Mars that will air on Hulu. Actor Clifton Collins Jr. (Westworld) and J.K. Simmons (Whiplash and Counterpart) and actress Isabela Vidovic (The Fosters) will have recurring roles in the much anticipated return of the fan favorite. In the revival, spring breakers are getting murdered in Neptune, thereby decimating the seaside town’s lifeblood tourist industry. After Mars Investigations is hired by the parents of one of the victims to find their son’s killer, Veronica (Kristin Bell) is drawn into an epic mystery that pits the enclave’s wealthy elites, who would rather put an end to the month-long bacchanalia, against a working class that relies on the cash influx that comes with being the West Coast’s answer to Daytona Beach. Collins will play Alonzo, a mid-level hitman for a Mexican cartel. Meanwhile, Vidovic will portray teenaged Matty Ross, who loses the most important person in the world in an act of violence, she isn’t content to wait for justice. She goes after it herself in acts so brazen. And, Simmons will play Clyde Prickett, an ex-con who served 10 years for racketeering, who is now a fixer for Big Dick Casablancas (David Starzyk), the richest real estate developer in the town of Neptune, California. (Entertainment Weekly and Deadline)
Actor Jon Cryer (Two and a Half Men) will appear as Lex Luthor on Supergirl while actress Hannah James (Mercy Street) and Kate Burton (Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy) will guest star as Nia Nal’s (new series regular Nicole Maines) older sister Maeve and mother respectively. (Deadline and Variety)
Actress Reshma Shetty (Royal Pains) has landed a recurring role on the CBS drama series Instinct that stars Alan Cumming as a former CIA operative who is lured back to his old life when the NYPD needs his help to stop a serial killer. Shetty will play Maya, a glamorous old love of Julian’s (Naveen Andrews), who comes back into his life with a proposal he cannot resist. (Deadline)
Actress Lauren Holly (Motive and NCIS) and actor Benjamin Watson (The L.A. Complex) have landed key recurring roles in the former ABC drama Designated Survivor which was picked up for season 3 by Netflix. The new season will find President Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) facing a political reality: campaigning. Holly will play Lynn Harper, the daughter of a renowned Virginia senator, who is married to Mars Harper, Kirkman’s new Chief of Staff. Watson will play Dontae Evans, a mid-20s Digital Officer in the West Wing. (Deadline)
Actor Matt Long (Helix and the recent Hallmark Channel movie Christmas Joy) has landed a major recurring role on Manifest, the new NBC supernatural thriller. He will play Zeke, a mysterious new character whose arrival triggers a new relationship triangle and upends the series’ mythology. (Deadline)
Actor Allen Leech (Downton Abbey and Bohemian Rhapsody) will star opposite actress Sophia Bush (Chicago P.D. and One Tree Hill) in the CBS drama pilot Surveillance, a spy thriller that will center on the head of communications for the NSA Maddy (Bush), a charming operative who finds her loyalties torn between protecting the government’s secrets and her own. Leech will play Mike, Maddy’s husband and an accomplished former CIA operative. (Deadline)
Actor RJ Cyler (Sierra Burgess is a Loser and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) has landed a recurring role on Black Lightning, playing Todd Green, the gangly and awkward tech genius who’s passed over for a research grant. He doesn’t take it well, until he gets an offer to join Tobias Whale (series regular Marvin “Krodon” Jones III). (Deadline)
That’s it. Enjoy!
Rueben's Ramblings 