Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week

CANCELLATIONS

Netflix has cancelled the Hilary Swank drama Away after one season. (Variety)

NEWS

Six months after it was launched, the cell phone based streaming service Quibi has officially ended. (Variety)

CASTING NEWS

Actress Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost) will have a recurring role in the 2nd season of the Netflix young adult drama Outer Banks that follows a tight-knit group of local teens (the “Pogues”) in the beach vacation destination of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. When a hurricane kills the power for the summer season, it sets off a chain of illicit events that force the friends to make life-altering decisions. Mitchell will play Limbrey, a long-time Charleston native; a compelling woman with a level of toxicity and menace underneath her seemingly courteous ways. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Actor Scott Speedman (Felicity) has joined the cast of You for its third season. He will play Matthew, a successful CEO, husband and uncommunicative father. He’s reserved, mysterious, and has a tendency to be withdrawn all of which masks a deep well of emotion underneath. (Twitter and The Futon Critic)

Actor Regie Lee has been promoted to series regular on All Rise where he recurred as Head DDA Thomas Choi last season. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Actress Jessica Chastian will take over the lead role from Michelle Williams in the upcoming HBO limited series Scenes From a Marriage where she will star opposite Oscar Isaac. The show is a limited series adaptation that will re-examine the show’s depiction of love, hatred, desire, monogamy, marriage and divorce through the lens of a contemporary American couple. (Variety)

Actor Dominic West (The Affair) is reportedly going to be playing Prince Charles in the final two seasons of The Crown on Netflix. Those seasons will center around the Royal family in the 1990s and early 2000s. (Variety)

Actress Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars and The Good Place) will star in the limited series The Woman in the House set to air on Netflix. She will play Anna who, for her, every day is the same. She sits with her wine, staring out the window, watching life go by without her. But when a handsome neighbor moves in across the street, Anna starts to see a light at the end of the tunnel. That is until she witnesses a gruesome murder or did she? (Variety)

Actress Connie Britton (Nashville) has joined the cast of the HBO limited series The White Lotus that follows the guests and employees at an exclusive tropical resort over the course of one week. (TV Line)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Actor Jake Gyllenhaal will star in a limited series HBO adaptation of The Son based on the 2014 novel by Jo Nesbo, which is described as a tale of vengeance set amid Oslo’s brutal hierarchy of corruption. (TV Line)

NBC has given a pilot commitment to the drama Sovereign, the first Native American family drama developed for network TV that will chronicle the lives, loves and loyalties of a sprawling Indigenous family struggling to control the future of their tribe against outside forces and themselves. Among the executives involved will be Ava DuVernay and Bird Runningwater. (Deadline)

Actresses Lili Taylor (Perry Mason) and Tamara Podemski (Coroner) and actor Tom Pelphrey (Ozark) will join actor Josh Brolin (The Avengers franchise) in the Amazon mystery drama Outer range that centers on Royal Abbott (Brolin), a rancher fighting for his land and family, who discovers an unfathomable mystery at the edge of Wyoming’s wilderness. Taylor will play Cecilia Abbott, the matriarch of the Abbott family, who is a woman of deep faith, which she finds tested as never before. Podemski will play Deputy Sheriff Joy, a life-long cop, running for county sheriff, and is the first gay Native American to ever do so in Wyoming. Pelphrey is Perry Abbott, the dutiful, eldest Abbott son, who is torn up inside by the lingering mystery of his missing wife. (Deadline)

Spectrum Originals will add another drama to its line-up. The Second Wave follows an unexpected, deadly second wave of the coronavirus outbreak in New York City, focusing on the lives of two neighbors, Rachel (Broadway star Audra McDonald) and Lily (Taylor Schilling from Orange Is the New Black), as they navigate life in quarantine in New York City. While Rachel juggles her many telemedicine clients as well as a shaky, passionless marriage, Lily is upstairs just trying to convince her Wall Street clientele that her very specific skill set is still just as valuable over video as it was in person. Steven Pasquale (Rescue Me) will play Rachel’s husband, Zach, a top official at the CDC who is stuck between the medicine he knows and the politics thrust upon him. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

UCP, a division of Universal Studio Group, is developing a series based on the Burt Reynolds movie Smokey and the Bandit that will explore the crossroads where humble realities meet those larger-than-life, all in a blast of tailpipe exhaust. (Variety)

The box office movie Willow will be coming to the small screen courtesy of Disney+. The sequel series will take place years after the events of the original film. Ron Howard, who directed the original film will executive producer alongside original star Warwick Davis, who will once again play the titular hero Willow Ufgood. (Variety)

MOVIE CASTING NEWS

Actress Chante Adams (Roxanne, Roxanne) will star opposite Michael B. Jordan in the box office movie A Journal for Jordan that is to be directed by Denzel Washington. The film will be based on the Dana Canedy best-selling memoir that tells the true story of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Canedy’s love affair with First Sergeant Charles Monroe King. King kept a journal full of poignant life lessons for their newborn son Jordan while deployed overseas. He was killed in Iraq in 2006 when Jordan was just seven months old, but his spirit lives on in his messages of love to Dana and Jordan. Adams will play Canedy. (Deadline)

Actress Scarlett Johansson will produce and star in the science-fiction, genre-bending film Bride that follows a woman created to be an ideal wife — the singular obsession of a brilliant entrepreneur. When she rejects her creator, she’s forced to flee her confined existence, confronting a world that sees her as a monster. While on the run, she finds her true identity, her surprising power and the strength to remake herself as her own creation. (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!