Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the entertainment news items for this past week:

RENEWED

Apple TV+ has given the Idris Elba airline thriller Hijack a second season renewal. Unlike the first season, the new season might not take place on an airplane at all; there’s no word yet on what predicament Sam (Elba’s character) will find himself in this time. Also Elba is the only cast member who’s confirmed to return at this point. (TV Line)

TV CASTING NEWS

Taraji P. Henson has joined the cast of the upcoming Peacock limited series Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, joining previously announced cast members Kevin Hart, Samuel J. Jackson and Terrence Howard in a story that will be set in Atlanta in 1970, focusing on the infamous story of how an armed robbery during the night of Muhammad Ali’s historic 1970 comeback fight changed not only one man’s life, but an entire city’s destiny. (Variety)

Recent Emmy winner Matthew Macfadyen and Michael Shannon are set to star in Death by Lightning, a new Netflix series that will examine the rise and eventual assassination of US President James Garfield based on the book “Destiny Of The Republic” by Candice Millard. The drama series will bring to life the epic and stranger-than-fiction true story of James Garfield (Shannon), the reluctant 20th president of the United States, and his greatest admirer Charles Guiteau (Macfadyen) — the man who would come to kill him. (Variety)

Catherine O’Hara has officially joined the second season cast of the HBO series The Last of Us in an undisclosed role. (TV Line)

Sam Waterston is leaving his long-standing role of DA Jack McCoy in Law & Order with his last episode set to air on February 22. Tony Goldwyn (Scandal) will take over, but details on his role as the new district attorney have yet to be revealed. (TV Line)

TV IN DEVELOPMENT

FOX is developing a one-hour drama called Borrowed Time that will include McG as one of its executive producers. The proposed series will focus on Neuroscientist Mimi Peters, who is working to extract memories from the human brain. Her technology is too dangerous to test on the living, but after she proves she can peer into the minds of the dead, FBI Agent Casey Harden comes calling. Together, they form an uneasy partnership using her technology to solve his cases. (Variety)

HBO is developing a limited series based on the Gillian Flynn novel Dark Places. The story focuses on Libby Day who was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in the famous 1985 ‘Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.’ She survived—and famously testified that her teenage brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, a pair of mother/daughter true crime ‘detectives’ locate a grownup Libby and pump her for details, believing that Ben is innocent. Libby, having spent her youth working the talk show circuit, hopes to once again turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings —for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist traps, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer. (Variety)

It looks like an official pilot order has been made by NBC for a spin-off to the USA Network series Suits, which found a massive following on Netflix last summer. The new series – Suits: LA – would follow a brand-new character, Ted Black, a former federal prosecutor from New York who has reinvented himself representing the most powerful clients in Los Angeles. With his firm at a crisis point, and in order to survive, he must embrace a role he held in contempt his entire career. (TV Line)

BOX OFFICE MOVIES NEWS

Recent Emmy winner Ayo Edebiri is leaving the Marvel’s Thunderbolts movie, due to scheduling issues, and will be replaced by Geraldine Viswanathan (Miracle Workers). The movie already boasts a massive ensemble cast of actors, including Sebastian Stan, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Hannah John-Kamen, Olga Kurylenko and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Specific plot details are being kept top secret though. (Variety)

House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock will be the next actress to play Supergirl in the new DC Universe. She will headline the upcoming feature film Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. (Variety)

The upcoming biographical drama about Michael Jackson from director Antonie Fuqua will feature Nia Long as Jackson’s mother Katherine. (Variety)

Amazon MGM has acquired a documentary about Celine Dion titled I Am Celine Dion, but the doc won’t be an expansive look at the life and times of the iconic pop singer, instead it will span about a year of the her life, chronicling Dion’s battle with Stiff Person Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that affects the brain and the spinal cord. (Variety)

Real life couple Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon will appear in a new film together, the first time that they have starred in a project together in 20 years, The upcoming comedy titled Connescence finds Bacon playing Stan Olszewski, a sharp, funny, but chronically underachieving security guard who breaks up an attempted robbery at the home of Cynthia Rand (Sedgwick), a successful urologist married to brilliant former Watergate prosecutor Warren Rand (to be played by Judd Hirsch). (ABC News)

Luke Evans and Milla Jovovich will star in the sci-fi action thriller World Breaker that centers on a father and his daughter. Five years previously, a tear in the fabric of reality brought creatures to our world from an alternate dimension bent on our destruction. The father hides his daughter on an island to keep her safe, while he prepares her for survival and the battles to come. But no place is safe. (Variety)

Once Upon a Time alum Lana Parrilla has joined the cast of the action thriller Bad Day at the Office that will find The Mummy alum John Hannah and Pitch Black star Radha Mitchell starring in a story about Karl (Hannah), who wakes up in a wrecked hotel room with no memory of what’s happened, where he is, or even who he is. When he discovers a dead body in the bathtub, it sets into motion a terrifying and explosive series of events that force Karl and hotel maid Molly (Mitchell) on a blind descent into a deceptive world of confusion and conspiracy. There are no specific details on what role Parrilla will play. (Variety)

The box office movie The Last Showgirl wil boats an ensemble cast include Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Bautista, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, and Billie Lourd. The film will follow a seasoned showgirl who must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run. As a dancer in her fifties, she struggles with what to do next. As a mother, she strives to repair a strained relationship with her daughter, who often took a backseat to her showgirl family. (Deadline)

It looks like Amy Adams just might be starring alongside Wednesday star Jenna Ortega in the box Klara and the Sun, which is set to be directed by Taika Waititi. The movie will tell the story of Klara (Ortega), an Artificial Friend designed to prevent loneliness. Klara is purchased by a mother (Adams) and a bright teen named Josie who adores her new robot companion but suffers from a mysterious illness. This is the story of Klara’s quest to save Josie and those who love her from heartbreak and how in the process Klara learns the power of human love. (Deadline)

The urban thriller Break the Cycle will boast Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr., Vivica Fox, Vernon Davis and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson among its cast. The movie wil ldelve into the lives of two brothers whose childhood is marred by a horribly tragic incident. Raised by their loving but stern grandmother, the brothers take radically different paths as they come of age in the gritty streets of Memphis. Jay, a gifted basketball player with dreams of making it to the NBA, is a beacon of hope for his grandmother and a potential ticket out of their harsh reality. However, the allure of his charismatic yet troubled brother, Eddie, who’s deeply entrenched in the world of street crime, casts a shadow over Jay’s future. (Deadline)

MADE FOR TV MOVIE NEWS

Bryce Dallas Howard and Orlando Bloom will star in the Prime Video U.K Original movie Deep Cover, a British action-comedy that will also include among its cast Sean Bean, Ian McShane and Paddy Considine. The movie sees three improv actors hired by the police to help stage low-level stings. Their instinct to ‘always say yes’ without breaking character leads them deep inside the London criminal underworld. (Variety)

A new Hannah Swensen (formerly Murder She Baked) mystery movie will happen over on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries with Alison Sweeney returning in the title role. But this time without Cameron Mathison, who has played her online screen love in the previous 8 movies in the franchise. This new installment entitled One Bad Apple: A Hannah Swensen Mystery will find Hannah being asked to teach a baking class at the college in town. When a colleague ends up dead, she begins to put together the puzzle of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the murder. During the investigation, Hannah meets a different side of law and order when Lake Eden’s prosecuting attorney, Chad Norton (Victor Webster), enters her life. It should be noted that Sweeney and Webster have appeared together in other Hallmark movies (The Wedding Veil franchise). (TV Insider)

That’s it. Enjoy!