Rueben's Ramblings

Hi All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

RENEWALS/CANCELLATIONS

The CW has renewed DC’s Stargirl for a third season before the second season is set to air this summer; and the new drama Kung Fu has been given a second season renewal. (TV Line)

ABC has renewed The Good Doctor for season 5; and the new drama Big Sky has been given a second season renewal. (TV Line)

FX gave Mayans M.C. a fourth season renewal. (TV Line)

Netflix has pulled the plug on the Sherlock Holmes-adjacent drama The Irregulars after only one season. (TV Line)

Fan efforts actually work sometimes. Case in point: Sanditon, the PBS small screen adaptation of the final, unfinished book by Jane Austen. The fan favorite series is actually coming back for TWO seasons with Rose Williams back as heroine Charlotte Heywood. Unfortunately Theo James will NOT be back as Sidney. Other casting will be announced at a later date. (TV Line)

The Stana Katic cop drama Absentia will not be back, as it has come to an end after its previously released third season. (TV Line)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

NBC is expanding the Law & Order franchise with a straight-to-series order for Law & Order: For the Defense, which will take a look inside a criminal defense firm, putting the lawyers under the microscope, along with the criminal justice system with every week delivering the promise of a contemporary morality tale. (Variety)

The twin music duo Tegan and Sara have a best-selling memoir “High School” that will be adapted as an original series for IMDbTV with actress-writer-director Clean DuVall serving as executive producer. The coming-of-age scripted series will be a transcendent story of first loves and first songs that will be told through a backdrop of 90’s grunge and rave culture, weaving between parallel and discordant memories of twin sisters growing up down the hall from one another. (Variety)

EPIX has given a greenlight to a one-hour, eight-episode series about Billy the Kid, that will be an epic romantic adventure about the famous American outlaw whose real name was William H. Bonney, chronicling from his humble Irish roots, to his early days as a cowboy and gunslinger in the American frontier, to his pivotal role in the Lincoln County War and beyond. (The Futon Critic)

SERIES PICK-UPS

FOX has picked up the drama Monarch for the fall TV season. The series is about a Texas-sized, multi-generational musical drama about America’s first family of country music. The Romans are fiercely talented, but while their name is synonymous with honesty, the very foundation of their success is a lie. When their reign as country royalty is put in jeopardy, Nicky Roman, the heir to the crown, already battling an industry stacked against her, will stop at nothing to protect her family’s legacy. (The Futon Critic)

STREAMING SERVICE POTENTIAL

For those who have access to the cable network EPIX, you are aware of the period piece drama Pennyworth, starring Jack Bannon as a young Alfred Pennyworth, the former British SAS soldier who ends up working for young billionaire Thomas Wayne (Ben Aldridge), the father of Bruce Wayne aka Batman. Well, if you don’t get EPIX, you may just be able to see Pennyworth at some point via HBO Max. It looks like the two networks just might be “sharing” the show IF Pennyworth returns for a third season. Should that renewal happen, both EPIX and HBO Max will have all three seasons available for viewing. A deal has not been officially made just yet. (The Hollywood Reporter)

TV CASTING NEWS

Erika Alexander (Living Single and Black Lightning), Derek Luke (13 Reasons Why) and Sam Trammell (True Blood) will star in the EPIX TV movie American Refugee, that tells the story of a family seeking shelter in a neighbor’s bunker (Trammell), while the American economy is in collapse and the nation under martial law. There they find the danger inside is potentially greater than the danger outside. (Deadline)

More cast members have been announced for the revival of Nash Bridges that will return as a two-hour movie at the USA Network. Don Johnson, Cheech Marin and Jeff Perry will be reprising their roles with Bonnie Somerville (Code Black) and Joe Dinicol (Arrow) among the additions. Somerville will play Christina Hunter, a psychiatrist who contracts with SIU to evaluate cops; while Dinicol will play Steven Colton, a by-the-book millennial cop. (Deadline)

Amazon Studios has won the rights to adapt the sci-fi podcast From Now into a TV series with Richard Madden and Brian Cox in the lead roles and as executive producers since they appeared in the podcast. Madden and Cox play identical twin brothers separated by time. The story chronicles the aftermath of their historic reunion when astronaut Edward Fitz’s (Madden) spacecraft suddenly reappears in Earth’s orbit after having gone missing 35 years earlier and Edward emerges looking the exact same age as when he left. (Deadline)

Elodie Yung (Daredevil) will star in the upcoming FOX drama The Cleaning Lady in this fall’s TV season. The show is based on the Argentinian series La Chica Que Limpia that focuses on Thony (Yung), a whip-smart doctor who comes to the U.S. for a medical treatment to save her ailing son; but when the system fails and pushes her into hiding, she refuses to be beaten down and marginalized. Instead, she becomes a cleaning lady for the mob and starts playing the game by her own rules. The show will also star Adan Canto (Designated Survivor). (Variety)

After 12 seasons playing Dr. Jackson Avery, Jesse Williams will be leaving the cast of Grey’s Anatomy. (TV Line)

The Netflix drama Sweet Magnolias has promoted Jamie Lynn Spears, Dion Johnstone and Brandon Quinn to series regulars for the show’s second season, which is currently in production and expected to premiere in 2022. Based on the popular series of novels by Sherryl Woods, follows lifelong best friends Maddie (JoAnna Garcia Swisher), Dana Sue (Brooke Elliott), and Helen (Heather Headley) as they juggle relationships, family, and careers in the charming small town of Serenity, SC. Spears plays Noreen Fitzgibbons, the pregnant former mistress of Bill Townsend, Maddie’s now ex-husband; Johnstone plays Erik Whitley, the sous chef at Sullivan’s restaurant, and supportive friend to Dana Sue; and Quinn plays Ronnie Sullivan, Dana Sue’s estranged husband. (Deadline)

True Blood and Big Little Lies alum Alexander Skarsgard has landed a recurring role on the HBO drama Succession, playing Lukas Matsson, a successful, confrontational tech founder and CEO. And, Oscar winner Adrien Brody (The Pianist) has also joined the cast, playing Josh Aaronson, a billionaire activist investor who becomes pivotal in the battle for the ownership of Waystar. (TV Line and Variety)

Luke Evans has joined the cast of the upcoming 10-episode Apple action-thriller series Echo 3 that will be set in South America, following Amber Chesborough, a brilliant young scientist, who is the emotional center of a small American family. But, when she goes missing along the Colombia and Venezuela border, her brother, Bambi (Evans), and her husband — two men with deep military experience and complicated pasts — struggle to find her in a drama set against the explosive backdrop of a secret war. (Variety)

Paul Guilfoyle will reprise his role of homicide detective captain Jim Brass in the upcoming reboot of CSI, joining returning cast members William Petersen, Jorja Fox and Wallace Langham. He will appear in just two episodes of CSI: Vegas, which will debut this fall on CBS. The tagline for the reboot of the series is: Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant new team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City. (Deadline and TV Line)

Elizabeth Olsen will star in the new HBO Max limited series Love and Death that is based on the true story of Texas housewife Candy Montgomery (Olsen), who murdered her friend from church, Betty Gore, with an axe in 1980. The limited series hails from writer and executive producer David E. Kelley with Nicole Kidman also serving as an executive producer. (Variety)

Tom Cavanagh and Carlos Valdes will be leaving The Flash at the end of this current season, the show’s 7th on The CW. (TV Line)

Billy Crudup has signed on to star in the Apple dramedy Hello Tomorrow, a 10-episode ½-hour series set in a retro-future world, centering around a group of traveling salesmen hawking lunar timeshares. Crudup will play Jack, a salesman of great talent and ambition, whose unshakeable faith in a brighter tomorrow inspires his coworkers, revitalizes his desperate customers, but threatens to leave him dangerously lost in the very dream that sustains him. (Variety)

Ali Wong (Always Be My Maybe) will appear in the upcoming Amazon adaptation of Paper Girls, which follows four young girls who, while out delivering papers on the morning after Halloween in 1988, become unwittingly caught in a conflict between warring factions of time-travelers, sending them on an adventure through time that will save the world. As they travel between our present, the past, and the future — they encounter future versions of themselves and now must choose to embrace or reject their fate. Wong will play Adult Erin – the woman twelve-year-old Erin Tieng (Riley Lai Nelet) grows up to become. When the two Erins finally come face-to-face, they are forced to confront the gap between their childhood hopes, dreams, ambitions and the reality of their grown-up life. (Variety)

BOX OFFICE CASTING NEWS

Hannah John-Kamen (Killjoys and Ant-Man and the Wasp) will star as Red Sonja in the long-gestating feature adaptation of the sword-wielding comic book fantasy hero that was last played by Brigitte Nielsen back in 1985. (Variety)

Harry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) will star alongside Dakota Johnson in the Netflix adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Persuasion, which will be a modern-day retelling of the romantic drama, centering on the conforming Anne Elliot (Johnson), who lives with her snobby family on the brink of bankruptcy. When Anne reconnects with Frederick Wentworth, a man she was once persuaded to reject, she faces a second chance at love. Golding will play Anne’s cousin Mr. Elliot. The character of Frederick Wentworth has yet to be cast. (Variety)

Mark Wahlberg will star in the Antoine Fuqua-directed sci-fi thriller Infinite that will debut exclusively on the streaming service Paramount Plus (formerly CBS All Access). The movie centers on a man named Evan McCauley (Wahlberg), who is haunted by the fact that he demonstrates skills he has never learned and has memories of places he has never visited. After encountering a secret group that call themselves “Infinites,” he discovers that his memories are real – but they are from multiple past lives. The cast will include Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Cookson, Rupert Friend, Toby Jones and Dylan O’Brien. (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!