Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

CANCELLATIONS/RENEWALS

The Apple TV series Dickinson, starring Hailee Steinfeld in the title character (Emily Dickinson), has been renewed for a third season ahead of the show’s 2nd season which will premiere on January 8, 2021. (Variety)

Unfortunately, despite being renewed for a season 4 previously, Netflix has decided to pull the plug on the female-centric wrestling drama GLOW. (TV Line)

CASTING NEWS

Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us) has joined the cast of The West Wing for the show’s reunion special, which will air on HBO Max. He will take over the role of Leo, originally played by the late John Spencer, who passed away back in 2005. (People)

Actor Derek Webster (In the Dark and NCIS: New Orleans) will have a season-long recuring role on 911: Lone Star, playing Charles Vega, the husband of Paramedic Captain Tommy Vega (Gina Torres), who is a restauranteur whose business is affected by the pandemic, so he becomes a stay-at-home dad while his essential worker wife goes to work. (Deadline)

Actress Brooke Smith (Grey’s Anatomy) will appear in the upcoming ABC drama Big Sky (from David E. Kelley). She will play Merrilee Legarski and will act opposite John Carroll Lynch’s Rick as his wife and mother of their two children. (Deadline)

Actress Joanne Froggatt (Downton Abbey) will star in the Spectrum Originals and ITV thriller Angela Black about a suburban housewife whose seemingly perfect life isn’t all it appears to be. Michiel Huisman (Game of Thrones) will play her husband Olivier. (Deadline)

Actress Samantha Marie Ware (Glee) and actor Shalim Ortiz (Grand Hotel and Power Book II: Ghost) will both have recurring roles in All Rise when it returns for its second season. Ware will play Vanessa “Ness” Johnson, a new law clerk for Judge Lola Carmichael (series lead Simone Missick) while Ortiz will play Joaquin Luna, a young photographer and political activist who crosses paths with public defender Emily Lopez (series regular Jessica Camacho). (TV Line)

Actor Demore Barnes (The Unit and American Gods) has been promoted to series regular on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit where he has been recurring as deputy chief Christian Garland. (TV Line and Deadline)

Actress Amy Carlson (Blue Bloods) and actor Terry O’Quinn (Lost) will both have recurring roles on FBI: Most Wanted. Carlson will play Jackie Ward, a veteran bounty hunter who has crossed paths with Jess (series lead Julian McMahon) before while O’Quinn will play Byron Lacroix, divorced father of Jess. (Deadline)

Actor JR Bourne (The 100 and Teen Wolf) will appear in the Los Angeles-based, half-hour Netflix series On Verge, which is about four female friends in their late 40s, (two of them played by Elisabeth Shue and Julie Delpy), who chose to use midlife not as a time of mourning their youth but as an opportunity for personal reinvention, with the hope of finally living lives that embody their beliefs and values. Bourne will play Adam, a free-spirit Venice hipster who shares an instant attraction to Anne (Shue’s character). (Deadline)

MOVIE CASTING NEWS

Actor Benedict Cumberbatch will appear as Doctor Strange in the next Spider-Man movie that will star Tom Holland as the webslinger. (Variety)

Actress Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale) will play former Congresswoman Katie Hill in a streaming film adaptation of Hill’s forthcoming book “She Will Rise: Becoming a Warrior in the Battle for True Equality.” In the book, Hill recounts her experience as a young woman with no prior political experience whose charm, and common sense won over the people in her district and thrust her into the halls of power in Washington. While her brash confidence won her powerful allies and infuriated her enemies, it was privately concealing a cycle of domestic abuse she was trapped in at home, infamously culminating in the release of intimate photos and the revelation of her own admitted personal mistakes that would eventually result in her stunning fall from grace. (Variety)

Actress Gal Gadot and Director Patty Jenkins will be working together again on the Paramount Pictures historical drama Cleopatra with Gadot, of course, playing the title character, who romanced Julius Caesar and Marc Antony and served as the last ruler of Egypt’s Ptolemaic Kingdom. Writer Laeta Kalogridis will do the screenplay. (Variety)

DEVELOPMENT/CASTING NEWS

HBO Max has given a series order to Green Lantern, which will consist of 10 one-hour episodes. The show will depict the adventures of a multitude of Lanterns, including Guy Gardner, Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz and Alan Scott — Earth’s first Green Lantern, who, true to the comics, is a gay man — and many more. The series will also include fan favorites such as Sinestro and Kilowog, and will also introduce new heroes to the ranks of the Green Lantern Corps. (Variety)

Chloë Grace Moretz has been cast in one of the lead roles in the upcoming series adaptation of William Gibson’s “The Peripheral” at Amazon. The series centers on Flynne Fisher (Moretz), a woman trying to hold together the pieces of her broken family in a forgotten corner of tomorrow’s America. Flynne is smart, ambitious and doomed. She has no future – until the future comes calling for her. Also, actor Gary Carr (21 Bridges and Modern Love) will appear in the adaptation as well, playing Wilf, a publicist living in the 22nd Century. (Variety)

Actor Paddy Considine (The Outsider) will play the regal role of King Viserys Targaryen in the upcoming Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. This story will be set 300 years before the original series. The show is slated to premiere on HBO in 2022. (Entertainment Weekly and TV Line)

That’s it. Enjoy!