Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

RENEWAL/CANCELLATION

HBO Max has given a second season renewal to Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. (TV Line)

The Handmaid’s Tale has been renewed for its 6th and final season. (TV Line)

Amazon has pulled the plug on the sci-fi series Paper Girls after only one season. (TV Line)

TV CASTING NEWS

Criminal Minds will be back for another rebooted season on Paramount+ this time under the name Criminal Minds: Evolution. There will be 10 episodes in this season and Friday Night Lights vet Zach Gilfrod will join the cast as the season-long villain Elias Voit, an operations analyst for a global cyber-security firm who has a dark side and obsession with death. Veteran cast members Joe Mantegna, A.J. Cook, Kirsten Vangsness, Aisha Tyler, Adam Rodriguez and Paget Brewster will be back but Matthew Gray Gubler and Daniel Henney will not be back. (TV Line)

Claire Danes has joined hte cast of the upcoming limited series Full Circle coming to HBO Max The series follows an investigation into a botched kidnapping that uncovers long-held secrets connecting multiple characters and cultures in present day New York City. The series will star Zazie Beetz Characters details are being kept under wraps, though. (Variety)

Lee Jung-Jae (from Squid Game) has been cast as the male lead in the upcoming Disney+ drama series The Acolyte that is set a century before the events of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. The series promises to depict the galaxy at the peak of the era of the High Republic, when the Jedi were at their strongest and the Sith were believed to have been eradicated from the galaxy. (Variety)

The Yellowstone offshoot series 1923 has added to its cast. Starring alongside Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford, who will play Jacob and Cara Dutton, will be James Badge Dale, who will play John Dutton, Sr., the oldest nephew and right-hand man of Jacob; Marley Shelton, who will play Emma Dutton, the dutiful wife of John Dutton Sr.; Darren Mann, who will play Jack Dutton, son of John Sr. and Emma; Michelle Randolph, who will play Elizabeth Strafford, a feisty and capable young woman set to marry into the Dutton family; Brian Geraghty, who will play Zane, a fiercely loyal ranch foreman; relative newcomer Aminah Nieves, who will play Teonna Rainwater (believed to be an ancestor of Gil Birmingham’s Thomas Rainwater), a young woman at a government residential boarding school; and Julia Schlaepfer, who will play Alexandra, a British woman who meets one of the Duttons abroad. (TV Line)

Kathryn Prescott (Finding Carter) will recur on New Amsterdam, playing Dr. Lauren Bloom’s estranged sister, Vanessa. (TV Line)

The role of Jonathan Kent on The CW’s Superman & Lois has been recast – after series regular Jordan Elsass decided not to return for the show’s upcoming third season. Australian actor Michael Bishop (Disney Channel’s Spin) will take over the role. (TV Line)

The upcoming Taylor Sheridan CIA drama Lioness that will debut on Paramount+ has added to its cast. The series is based on a real-life CIA program that will follow Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira), a rough-around-the-edges but passionate young Marine recruited to join the CIA’s Lioness Engagement Team to help bring down a terrorist organization from within. Zoe Saldaña will play Joe, the station chief of the Lioness program tasked with training, managing and leading her female undercover operatives. The new cast members are James Jordan, LaMonica Garrett, and Dave Annable, but details on the characters they will play are being kept under wraps. (Variety)

MADE-FOR-TV MOVIES

The upcoming Beauty and the Beast live-action/animation production that is set to air ABC will star Grammy winner H.E.R. as Belle and now also includes among its cast actor-singer Josh Groban, who will play Beast; Joshua Henry who will play Gaston and legendary actress Rita Moreno who will serve as the show’s narrator, guiding viewers along the classically enchanting tale. (Variety)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Actress Shira Haas and actor Tim Blake Nelson have joined the cast of the upcoming box office movie Captain Ameria: New World Order that will star Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson aka Falcon. Haas will play Sabra and Nelson will play The Leader. Also, Carl Lumbly will reprise his role as Isaiah Bradley. (Variety)

The cast members for the upcoming team-up movie Marvel’s Thunderbolts will include Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Olga Kurylenko, Julie Louis-Dreyfus and Hannah John-Kamen. (TV Line)

Winona Ryder, Dan Levy and Hasan Minaj have joined the cast of the Disney remake of Haunted Mansion. The movie already includes Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, LaKeith Stanfield, Jared Leto, Tiffany Haddish, Jamie Lee Curis and Danny DeVito. The supernatural comedy will follow Gabbie (Dawson), a single mom with a nine-year-old son, who is looking to start a new life. She buys a strangely affordable mansion in New Orleann, which they soon discover is haunted. (Variety)

Ariana DeBose will provide her voice to the upcoming Disney film Wish that will blend the classic watercolor-esque Disney animation style with a newer, CGI look. DeBose will play Asha, the 17-year-old heroine and protagonist. Alan Tudyk will also provide his voice to an adorable goat named Valentino. (Variety)

Benedict Cumberbatch and Mark Strong will star alongside Jodie Comer in the upcoming film The End We Start From. The film will focus on what happens when an environmental crisis sees London submerged by flood waters, causing a young family to be torn apart in the chaos. The cast will include Katherin Waterston, Joel Fry, Nina Sosanya and Gina McKee. (Variety)

The upcoming action thriller Land of Bad will star Liam Hemsworth, his brother Luke Hemsworth, Milo Ventimiglia, Ricky Whittle and Russell Crowe. The film will follow Reaper (Crowe), an Air Force drone pilot supporting a Delta Force special ops mission in the South Philippines. After the mission goes terribly wrong, Reaper has 48 hours to remedy what has devolved into a wild rescue operation. The Tier-One team, led by Cpt. Sugar (Ventimigila) and Sgt. Abel (Luke Hemsworth) is re-deployed to return and retrieve their captured man and the asset. They are joined by Kinney (Liam Hemsworth), a green Air Force JTAC officer, who is thrust into the middle of a high-stakes extraction. But the ground mission suddenly turns upside down and becomes a full-scale battle when the team is discovered by the enemy. With no weapons and no communication other than the drone above, Reaper becomes the young operator’s only ticket out. (Variety)

Nicolas Cage and Joel Kinnaman will star in the upcoming psychological thriller Sympathy for the Devil, which will follow The Driver (Kinnaman), as he finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse after being forced to drive a mysterious man known as The Passenger (Cage). (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!