Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for past week:

RENEWALS/CANCELLATION

Virgin River has been given a fourth and fifth season by Netflix. (TV Line)

Netflix has cancelled Hit & Run after only one season. (TV Line)

The Witcher has been given a 3rd season renewal in advance of the show’s soon-to-air second season airing on Netflix. (Variety)

REUNION ANNOUNCEMENT

Paramount+ has ordered a reunion movie for the MTV thriller series Teen Wolf and original cast members, along with the series creator Jeff Davis, are eyed to return. The movie synopsis is: “A full moon rises in Beacon Hills, and with it a terrifying evil has emerged. The wolves are howling once again, calling for the return of Banshees, Werecoyotes, Hellhounds, Kitsunes, and every other shapeshifter in the night. But only a Werewolf like Scott McCall, no longer a teenager yet still an Alpha, can gather both new allies and reunite trusted friends to fight back against what could be the most powerful and deadliest enemy they’ve ever faced.” Davis is also developing a new spin-off (like) series called Wolf Pack, based on the book series by Edo Van Belkom, that follows a teenage boy and girl whose lives are changed forever when a California wildfire awakens a terrifying supernatural creature and drives it to attack a highway traffic jam beneath the burning hills. Wounded in the chaos, the boy and girl are inexplicably drawn to each other and to two other teenagers who were adopted sixteen years earlier by a park ranger after another mysterious wildfire. As the full moon rises, all four teens come together to unravel the secret that connects them – the bite and blood of a werewolf. (TV Line)

LEAVING THE SHOW

FBI: Most Wanted will bid goodbye to cast member Kellan Lutz, who is leaving the show. He released a statement on social media stating that a series of real-life heartbreaks, including the loss of his first-born daughter last year, led to his early exit. (TV Line)

SERIES PICK-UP

NBC has ordered the high-stakes thriller drama The Endgame that will star Morena Baccarin (Firefly, Gotham and Homeland) and Ryan Michelle Bathe (First Wives Club and All Rise). The series follows Elena Federova (Baccarin), a very recently captured international arms dealer and criminal mastermind who can orchestrate many complicated and coordinated bank heists, even while in captivity, and Val Turner (Bathe), the principled, relentless and socially-outcast FBI agent who will stop at nothing to foil Elena’s plan. The cast also includes Noah Bean (Nikita and 9-1-1). (Variety)

EPIX has a new limited series coming up based on the beloved best-selling Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “All the Light We Cannot See” that became a global phenomenon in 2014. The show will tell the story of Marie-Laure, a teenager who is blind, and Werner, a German soldier, whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. (The Futon Critic)

SUPERNATURAL REUNION

Supernatural fans will be delighted to hear there will be a reunion (of sorts) behind the scenes at Walker. The CW series stars Jared Padalecki in the lead role, and the second season will find Jensen Ackles behind the camera directing an episode. (TV Insider)

TV CASTING NEWS

A slew of recurring cast members have been added to season 2 of the HBO Max series The Flight Attendant. They include JJ Soria (Army Wives and Animal Kingdom); Santiago Cabrera (Heroes, Salvation and Big Little Lies); Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Expanse); comedian extraordinaire Margaret Cho and Cheryl Hines (Waitress and Curb Your Enthusiasm). (The Futon Critic)

Hulu has landed the drama Black Cake, based on the upcoming book of the same name by Charmaine Wilkerson, which is a family drama wrapped in a murder mystery with a diverse cast of characters and a global setting. The story takes place in Jamaica, Rome, Scotland, England and Southern California. In the late 1960s, a runaway bride named Covey disappears into the surf off the coast of Jamaica and is feared drowned or a fugitive on the run for her husband’s murder. Fifty years later in California, Eleanor Bennett, a widow in her 60s, loses her battle with cancer, leaving her two estranged children a flash drive that holds previously untold stories of her journey from the Caribbean to America. These stories, narrated by Eleanor, shock her children and challenge everything they thought they knew about their family’s origin. (Deadline)

The cast of the upcoming Game of Thrones prequel – The House of the Dragon – has grown. It now includes Outlander alums Graham McTavish and Bill Paterson. This series will set a few hundred years prior to the events of Game of Thrones, telling the story of House Targaryen and the Targaryen civil war that became known as the “Dance of the Dragons.” McTavish will play Ser Harrold Westerling, who has served in the Kingsguard since the days of King Jaehaerys; he is a paragon of chivalry and honor. Paterson will play Lord Lyman Beesbury, who serves on King Viserys’s small council. HBO has given the series a 10-episode order and it is anticipated to debut in 2022. (Variety)

Patricia Arquette (Medium) will star in, direct and executive produce the Showtime limited series Love Canal, which is based on the upcoming documentary “The Canal” by Will Battersby and the upcoming book by journalist Keith O’Brien entitled “Paradise Falls.” The limited series will focus on a group of blue collar women who came together in the late 1970s to fight for environmental justice for their community. The women became activists when they realized that 20,000 tons of deadly chemicals were buried beneath their neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York. With little formal education or training, they took on the chemical industry and the US government and inspired the first major environmental rights legislation in the US. (Variety)

Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner) has been cast as Dodi Fayed opposite Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana in the Netflix drama The Crown. Salim Daw (Oslo) will star as Dodi’s father, billionaire and former Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed. (Variety)

Colin Donnell (Arrow and Chicago Med) will star in the Australia-set crime drama Irreverent that will be coming to Peacock as a straight-to-order series. The drama will follow a criminal from Chicago who bungles a heist and is forced to hide out in a small Australian reef town in Far North Queensland posing as the new church Reverend. Donnell will play Mack/Paulo, a skilled and articulate mediator who keeps the peace between organized crime families in Chicago. After a mediation goes badly wrong, Mack flees to a remote beach town in tropical Australia where he is forced to assume the identity of a Reverend in order to stay ahead of the people who want him dead. (Deadline)

Rashida Jones and David Oyelowo will join Rebecca Ferguson and Tim Robbins in the Apple series adaptation of the Hugh Howey novels Wool, which is set in a ruined and toxic future where a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Oyelowo will star as Holston, the Silo’s sheriff while Jones will play Allison, his wife who also works in IT for the Silo. (Variety)

Firefly Lane has added to its cast for season 2. Ignacio Serricchio (Lost In Space) will play Danny Diaz, a cocky sportscaster turned reporter who has crackling chemistry with Tully (series lead Katherine Heigl). Greg Germann (Grey’s Anatomy and Ally McBeal) will play Benedict Binswanger, the scion of an influential logging family, who parlays his success in business into a run for Governor of Washington state in the 1980s. India de Beaufort (Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, NCIS: Los Angeles and Younger) will play Charlotte. As we meet Charlotte in 1985 Seattle, she’s a quiet and reserved aspiring journalist with a hopeless crush on Johnny Ryan (Ben Lawson). But over the years she grows into a world-renowned, confident and sophisticated reporter, a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it. Jolene Purdy (The White Lotus and Under the Dome) will play Justine Jordan, a sunny, upbeat talent agent with a knack for keeping a positive demeanor even when delivering devastating news. She’s always got a plan, and is ready to execute it. An up and coming power player in the world of entertainment. (Deadline)

Kathryn Hahn (WandaVision) will star as Joan Rivers in the Showtime limited series The Comeback Girl that will chronicle the trailblazing comedian. (Variety)

Betty Gilpin (GLOW) has joined the cast of the upcoming Showtime drama Three Women alongside Shailene Woodley and DeWanda Wise, based on the book by Lisa Taddeo that is a portrayal of American female desire, in which three women are on a crash course to radically overturn their lives. (Variety)

ABC has added new recurring cast members to the upcoming second season, including Romy Rosemont (Glee and A Million Little Things), Michael Malarkey (Project Blue Book and The Originals) and David Meunier (Justified). Rosemont will play Agatha, who co-runs an animal rehabilitation ranch in rural Montana; Malarkey will play Deputy Harvey, a pompous, self-assured cop who, despite preaching respect for the law, sells his loyalty to the highest bidder; and Meunier will play Dietrich, the leader of a local crew of drug dealers who will go to war with their suppliers when a large shipment they paid for never turns up. Season 2 will premiere on September 30. (Deadline)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick and cast member on Mare of Easttown) has landed her first lead role in a studio movie. She will play Rose in the box office film Something’s Wrong With Rose based on the short “Laura Hasn’t Slept” that focuses on a doctor whose mind begins to turn on her after she witnesses a horrifying occurrence. (Variety)

Peter Mullan (Westworld) and Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) have joined the cast of the upcoming box office film The Hanging Sun based on the best-selling novel by Jo Nesbo, which will be a noir thriller set in a part of Norway where religion dominates, the sun never sets, and local residents seem to be from a different era. The film follows John, a man on the run because he has betrayed his powerful crime-lord father, Dad. To escape from his family, John heads north and takes refuge deep in the forest near an isolated village. The only thing standing between John and his destiny are Lea, a woman facing hardship with a great deal of strength, and her son Caleb, a curious, pure-hearted boy. Alessandro Borghi (the Italian series Devils) will play John, Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey) will play Lea, Dance will play Jacob, Lea’s father and Mullan will play Dad. (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!