Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

CANCELLATIONS/RENEWALS

Peacock has cancelled Brave New World after one season. (TV Line)

Netflix has renewed The Baby-Sitters Club for a second season. (TV Line)

FOX has cancelled both new dramas Filthy Rich and NEXT mere weeks after each show debuted. Any remaining episodes for each show will be aired, however. (TV Line)

The CW has picked up the Canadian dramas Burden of Truth and Coroner for a fourth and third season respectively. Both dramas have already been renewed by their home Canadian network CBC. Burden of Truth will follow Joanna (Kristen Kreuk) and her husband and law partner Billy (Peter Mooney) as they take on a mining company. (The Hollywood Reporter)

MOVIE CASTING NEWS

Actresses Awkwafina and Sandra Oh will star in an as-yet untitled comedy flick at Netflix, playing sisters. Oh will star as a lonely recluse whose life is upended when her train-wreck sister (Awkwafina) vows to mend their relationship by helping her fulfill a lifelong dream: to appear as a contestant on her favorite game show. (Variety)

Father-daughter duo Ethan and Maya Hawke are set to star in the romantic coming-of-age comedy Revolver that will be set in 1966. Maya will play Jane, a teen resident of Anchorage, Alaska. When the impossible happens — a flight to Japan carrying The Beatles is forced to make an unexpected stop — all hell breaks loose as the unsuspecting residents are consumed by Beatlemania. Jane devises a plan to lose her virginity to George Harrison, discovering that adventure (and romance) are actually a little closer to home than she thought. (Variety)

Actor Joel Kinnaman will executive produce and star in a feature film about NFL player Jerry Smith and his long-time teammate Brig Owens. The film will be set at the height of the civil rights movement between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, during a time of societal upheaval. Smith was secretly gay — a fact he kept hidden until his death from AIDS in 1986 — and Owens faced constant challenges and bigotry as a Black man while attending law school. Through it all, the men formed a close bond to always be there for each other regardless of differences or obstacles. (Variety)

Actor Sam Heughan (Outlander and actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas (Quantico) will star in the romantic drama tentatively titled Text For You that will include international music icon Celine Dion. The movie is inspired by the 2016 German-language box office hit SMS Fur Dich about a woman who, to ease the pain after tragically losing her fiancé, starts to send romantic texts to his old cell. It turns out, the phone number has been reassigned to a man across town suffering from similar heartbreak. The two meet and feel an undeniable connection, but can’t seem to leave the past behind. In this verion the music and influence of Dion gives them the courage to take a chance on love again. (Deadline)

CASTING NEWS

Nicole Kidman will star in and executive producer the Amazon drama series Things I Know to Be True, based on the play by Andrew Bovell, that is about the resilience of an enduring marriage and the evolving nature of a family’s love, as Bob and Fran Price watch their adult children make unexpected decisions which change the course of their lives. (Variety)

Actor/musician Felix Mallard (Locke & Key, Happy Together and the Australian soap Neighbours) has joined the cast of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. He will recur as Zoey’s childhood free spirit neighbor Aiden, who has returned from backpacking around Asia, moving back in with his parents while trying to launch a garage band. (TV Line)

Some of the new cast members for the second season of Why Women Kill, the anthology series on CBS All Access, have been announced, including Alison Tolman (Fargo and Emergence), Lana Parrilla (Once Upon a Time), Matthew Daddario (Shadowhunters) and Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead) [among others]. (The Futon Critic and Deadline)

Actress YaYa Gosselin has been promoted to series regular on FBI: Most Wanted where she plays Tali, the daughter of Jess LaCroix (Julian McMahon). (Deadline and TV Line)

Actor Jason Diaz (The 100) has landed a recurring role in season 3 of Charmed where he will play Antonio, a charming classmate of Maggie’s (series lead Sarah Jeffery) who becomes her nemesis. (Deadline and TV Line)

Actor Nick Tarabay (Arrow) has joined the cast of season two of DC’s Stargirl. He will play Eclipso. Jonathan Cake will recur as The Shade. The arrival of Eclipso and The Shade was foreshadowed in the final moments of Stargirl‘s first season finale. While Cindy (Meg DeLacy) found a mysterious diamond shard in The Magician’s storage locker, The Shade was seen materializing inside the ISA lair. (Deadline and TV Line)

Actresses Claudia Doumit and Colby Minifie have been promoted to series regular for season 3 of The Boys. Claudia plays Victoria Neuman, the young wunderkind congresswoman who harbors a dark secret while Colby plays Ashley Barrett, the often stressed VP of Hero Management for Vought. (Deadline)

Actress Sarah Drew (Grey’s Anatomy and Everwood) will appear in the upcoming Freeform thriller Cruel Summer, which takes place over three summers – 1993 to 1995 – in a small Texas town when a beautiful popular teen, Kate (Olivia Holt), is abducted and, seemingly unrelated, a girl, Jeanette (Chiara Aurelia), goes from being a sweet, awkward outlier to the most popular girl in town and, by ’95, the most despised person in America. Each episode is told from the point of view of one of the two main girls. Drew will play Cindy Turner, the mother to Jeanette. Although once the most popular girl in town, Cindy struggles to hold her family together while being in the crosshairs of town gossip. (Deadline)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Mindy Kaling will produce and star in the film Good in Bed based on the best-selling book by Jennifer Weiner that tells the story of an up-and-coming journalist in Philadelphia, grappling with shaky self-esteem, a fresh-out-of-the-closet mom, an absent father and the guy who broke her heart. In the course of one eventful year, with the help of a fairy godmother’s best friend (also a movie star), the protagonist weathers public humiliation, finds true love and learns to accept herself, and her life, in all of its messy, imperfect glory. (Variety)

The CW is working on a Nancy Drew spin-off drama (no not The Hardy Boys), but rather a series centered on iconic inventor Tom Swift with a twist: the formerly white, blonde and straight lead character will now be Black and gay. Tom Swift will follow the serialized adventures of the billionaire inventor who is thrust into a world of sci-fi conspiracy and unexplained phenomena after the shocking disappearance of his father. Tom takes to the road on a quest to unravel the truth, leaving behind the comforts of his usual moneyed lifestyle, all while fighting to stay one step ahead of an Illuminati-scale group hell-bent on stopping him. The Tom Swift character will appear in an episode of Nancy Drew‘s upcoming second season. (TV Line)

Actor Oscar Isaac (the Star Wars franchise) is expected to star in the Marvel series Moon Knight at Disney+, which tells the story of Marc Spector, an elite soldier and mercenary, who decides to fight crime after he becomes the human avatar of Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon. (Variety)

Netflix is developing a live-action series based on Assassin’s Creed, the best-selling video game franchise that first debuted in 2007 and became an instant hit. The game explores the war between the rival secret orders of the Assassins and the Templars as they use advanced machines to access the genetic memories of Assassins in different periods of the past to track down powerful artifacts called Pieces of Eden. (Variety)

Actress Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black and Mrs. America) is set to star in a 4th season of the HBO drama In Treatment. The reimagined series will focus on a diverse trio of patients in session with the observant, empathetic Dr. Brooke Lawrence (Aduba) while she wrestles with her own issues. The show is slated to debut in 2021. (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!