Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

RENEWAL

No great surprise: CBS has given a season 2 order for The Equalizer. (Variety)

Outlander has been renewed for a 7th season. The show is currently in production for season 6. (TV Line)

CANCELLATION

The USA Network has announced the upcoming 5th season of Queen of the South, which premieres on April 7, and consists of 10 episodes, will be the show’s last. (Variety)

TV SERIES DEVELOPMENT NEWS

A spin-off series to The Boys is nearing a series order at Amazon. The series will be set at America’s only college exclusively for young adult superheroes (and run by Vought International), and much like its predecessor it will be an irreverent, R-rated show that explores the lives of hormonal, competitive Supes as they put their physical, sexual, and moral boundaries to the test, competing for the best contracts in the best cities. (Variety)

The TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “Wild Card” book series is moving from Hulu to Peacock. The show remains in development as a new writer is ongoing. In the series, an alien pathogen known as the Wild Card virus is released over Manhattan in 1946, altering the course of human history. The virus rewrites DNA, mutating its survivors. A lucky few are granted awe-inspiring superpowers, while the sad majority are left with often repulsive physical deformities. (Variety)

TV CASTING NEWS

Sarah Drew will reprise her role of Dr. April Kepner in an upcoming episode of Grey’s Anatomy. (Deadline and TV Line)

Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars) will star in the upcoming AMC-Alibi series Ragdoll, which is based on the novel by Daniel Cole. The series will focus on the murder and dismemberment of six people, who are sewn into the shape of one grotesque body: nicknamed the Ragdoll. Assigned to the shocking case are DS Nathan Rose, recently reinstated to the London Met; his best friend and boss, DI Emily Baxter; and the unit’s new recruit, DC Lake Edmunds (who will be played by Hale). The “Ragdoll Killer” taunts the police by sending them a list of his next victims, with Rose’s name among them. And with those victims to protect, our heroes soon come under intense public scrutiny. (Variety)

Kaley Cuoco will star as legendary singer-actress-animal rights activist Doris Day in a limited series that will be based on the 1976 biography by A.E. Hotchner. The series has yet to be picked up by any network, though. (Variety)

Michelle Gomez (Doctor Who and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) has joined the cast of the third season of Doom Patrol, appearing as Madame Rouge, the eccentric villainess, who arrives at Doom Manor with a very specific mission. Doom Patrol will move to HBO Max exclusively for its 3rd season after 2 seasons on the now-defunct DC Universe. (TV Line)

The limited series Lady in the Lake, based on the Laura Lipman novel, has been given a straight-to-series order at Apple with Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o set to star. The series akes place in 1960s Baltimore, where an unsolved murder pushes housewife and mother Maddie Schwartz (Portman) to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist and sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood (Nyong’o), a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda. (Variety)

Netflix has another new series coming to the streaming service: First Kill, based on the short story by Victoria “V.E.” Schwab. In the show, when it’s time for teenage vampire Juliette Fairmont (relative newcomer Sarah Catherine Hook) to make her first kill so she can take her place among a powerful vampire family, she sets her sights on a new girl in town, Calliope Burns (Imani Lewis from the box office film Eighth Grade and the TV series Star). But much to Juliette’s surprise, Calliope is a vampire hunter, from a family of celebrated slayers. Both find that the other won’t be so easy to kill and, unfortunately, way too easy to fall for. (Variety)

Paul Bettany and Claire Foy will the BBC One and Amazon Prime drama A Very British Scandal, portraying the Duchess and Duke of Argyll, aka the key players in one of Britain’s most salacious divorce cases of the 20th century. (TV Line)

Katrina Law (Arrow and Hawaii Five-0) will have a recurring role in the current 18th season of NCIS, playing Special Agent Jessica Knight, a formidable woman whose specialty is hostage negotiations. There is the potential for Law to return as a series regular for the show’s 19th season. (TV Line and Deadline)

Dakota Fanning will join Andrew Scott and Johnny Flynn in the Showtime drama Ripley that will be based on the Patrick Highsmith novels about Tom Ripley. Scott will play Tom Ripley, a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, who is hired by a wealthy businessman to travel to Italy to try to convince his vagabond son to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit. Fanning will play Marge Sherwood, an American living in Italy who suspects darker motives underlie Tom’s affability. (Variety)

The planned NBC drama about the Dan Brown character Robert Langdon is moving to the streamer Peacock and will follow the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (to be played by Ashley Zukerman), who must solve a series of deadly puzzles to save his kidnapped mentor and thwart a chilling global conspiracy. (Variety)

The CW has announced the cast for its planned Powerpuff Girls live-action pilot. They include Chloe Bennet (Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD), Dove Cameron (from the Disney movie franchise Descendants) and Yana Perrault (Broadway’s Jagged Little Pill) as Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup Utonium, respectively. This series will pick up with the titular heroines as disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime fighting. (TV Line)

Dominique Fishback will star alongside Samuel L. Jackson in the Apple drama series The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, based on the novel by Walter Mosley. Jackson will play the title character, a 91 year old man forgotten by his family, by his friends, by even himself. On the brink of sinking even deeper into a lonely dementia, Grey experiences a seismic shift when he’s given the tremendous opportunity to briefly regain his memories, and uses this precious and fleeting lucidity to solve his nephew’s death and come to terms with his past. Fishback will play Robyn, a friend of the family who helps Ptolemy. (Variety)

Josh Holloway (Lost) will star in the lead role in the HBO Max series Duster that will be set in the 1970’s Southwest, exploring the life of a getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate. (Variety)

Lexi Underwood (Little Fires Everywhere) will play Malia Obama in the upcoming Showtime anthology series The First Lady. (Variety)

Mandy Patinkin will appear in the upcoming season of The Good Fight, playing Hal Wackner, a layman with no legal training who spontaneously decides to open a court in the back of a copy shop. Against all odds, the court catches on, and the team at Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart find themselves contending with judgements that mean nothing legally, but are honored by much of the entertained public. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

The long-in-the-works NBC drama LA Brea will star Eoin Macken (The Night Shift) and Natalie Zea (Justified and The Detour). The show will focus on what happens when a massive sinkhole mysteriously opens in Los Angeles, it tears a family in half, separating mother and son from father and daughter. Macken and Zea will play the father and mother: Gavin and Eve Harris. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Chelsea Harris, who recurs as Sykes, one of Wolford’s right hand people on Big Alice in the TNT series Snowpiercer will return as a regular for the show’s third season. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Tom Mison (Sleepy Hollow) will appear in the second season of the Apple TV series See. (TV Line)

Famke Janssen (X-Men and Taken franchises) will recur in the Spectrum Original series Long Slow Exhale that follows J.C. Abernathy (Rose Rollins from The L Word), the successful head coach of a competitive women’s college basketball team who finds herself in the middle of a potentially career shattering sexual abuse scandal. Sorting through the secrets to unravel the truth, she is forced to make decisions that will affect her, her family and the young female athletes who depend on her. Janssen will play Dr. Melinda Barrington, Chancellor of the University. (Deadline)

BOX OFFICE CASTING NEWS

Tiffany Haddish will star in the Netflix feature adaptation of Mystery Girl, which is based on the Dark Horse comic created by Paul Tobin and Alberto Alburquerque. Haddish will star as Trine who, living off the grid in Los Angeles as a street psychic, has no memory of who she is or where she came from but is guided by an omniscient VOICE in her head that knows everyone’s business and everyone’s darkest secrets. When a down on his luck LAPD officer, Cooper, seeks out Trine in hopes that she’ll help him crack a case, the two are framed for murder and must work together to clear their names and solve the ultimate mystery: the one behind Mystery Girl herself. (Deadline)

Elle Fanning will star as Ali MacGraw in the box office movie Francis and the Godfather that will be about the making of the classic mobster film. (Variety)

Mission Impossible 7 has added to its cast. Those new cast members include Cary Elwes (Princess Bride), Indira Varma (Game of Thrones), Charles Parnell (The Last Ship) and Mark Gatiss (Sherlock). They join returning stars Tom Cruise, Vanessa Kirby, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett, and Henry Czerny along with newcomers Pom Klementieff (Guardians of the Galaxy), Hayley Atwell (MCU alum), Shea Whigham (Perry Mason) and Esai Morales (who took over for Nicholas Hoult) as the film’s villain. (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!