Hey All,
Here are the entertainment news items for this past week:
RENEWALS/CANCELLATIONS
Netflix has given Emily in Paris a fifth season renewal. (TV Line)
AMC has pulled the plug on Orphan Black: Echoes after its debut season. (Deadline and TV Line)
Max has pulled the plug on the reboot of Pretty Little Liars after two seasons. (TV Line)
Apple TV+ has cancelled the comedy Time Bandits after only one season. (TV Line)
HBO has given a season four renewal to Industry. (TV Line)
Nearly 3 years after its last original episode, When Hope Calls, the spin-off series to the Hallmark Channel long-running series When Calls the Heart, has been renewed for season two, but instead of airing on the Hallmark Channel it will now be airing on the rival network Great American Family. (TV Line)
TV CASTING NEWS
As mentioned above, When Hope Calls will be back for a second season (on Great American Family instead of Hallmark Channel), and has added new cast members, including Cindy Busby (Cedar Cove) as Nora; Christopher Russell (UnREAL) as Mountie Michael. They join returning cast members Morgan Kohan, Ryan-James Hatanaka, Hanneke Talbot and Wendy Crewson. (TV Line)
Harry Potter alum Katie Leung has joined the cast of season four of Bridgerton in which she will play Lady Araminta Gun, a twice married and twice widowed woman, who has two girls debuting on the marriage mart this season and is feeling the pressure to get at least one of them married off. (TV Line)
Syfy is working on an adaptation of the series Revival, based on the Image Comics series by Tim Seeley and Mike Norton. The main cast will include Melanie Scrofano (Wynonna Earp) and David James Elliott (JAG). The synopsis for the series is: On one miraculous day in rural Wisconsin, the recently deceased suddenly rise from their graves. But this is no zombie story, as the ‘revived’ appear and act just like they once were. When local officer and single mother Dana Cypress (Scrofano) is unexpectedly thrown into the center of a brutal murder mystery of her own, she’s left to make sense of the chaos amidst a town gripped by fear and confusion where everyone, alive or undead, is a suspect. Elliott will play Wayne Cypress, the longtime sheriff who is determined to keep his town and family as normal and safe as possible — a tall order when the dead return to life in the small town he’s sworn to protect. (Variety)
Sources are reporting that Emmy winner Archie Panjabi will star as a villain in Season 2 of Doctor, but details about her character are being kept under wraps. (Deadline)
Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis will star in the Amazon Prime series adaptation of the Kay Scarpetta novels by Patricia Cornwell. The streaming service has given a greenlight for two seasons and has added cast members including Ariana DeBose, Bobby Cannavale and Simon Baker. The mystery-thriller series follows Kay Scarpetta (Kidman), the Chief Medical Examiner, as she returns to Virginia and resumes her former position with complex relationships, both personal and professional – including her sister Dorothy (Curtis), with plenty of grudges and secrets to uncover. Cannavale will play former detective Pete Marino while Baker will play FBI profiler Benton Wesley and DeBose will play Lucy Farinelli-Watson, Dorothy’s daughter. (Variety)
Sons of Anarchy alum Charlie Hunnam will star as notorious serial killer Ed Gein in season 3 of the Ryan Murphy-created anthology series Monster. Gein became infamous in the 1950s when authorities discovered that he not only had killed multiple people, but had dug up graves from a cemetery near his home and fashioned all manner of household items and clothing from human remains. Gein’s case served as an inspiration for several major pop culture characters later on, including Norman Bates in Psycho and Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. (Variety)
In addition to being the moderator for NCIS: Origins, Mark Harmon will briefly appear on screen during the pilot episode of the prequel series. (TV Line)
STREAMING SERVICE MOVIE
Reacher lead Alan Ritchson will star in the Netflix movie War Machine, playing an Army Ranger undergoing a grueling selection process. He will star alongside Dennis Quaid, Stephan James, Jai Courtney, Esai Morales, and Australian actors Blake Richardson, Keiynan Lonsdale, and Daniel Webber. (Variety and Collider)
BOX OFFICE NEWS
The best-selling romance novel People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry is being adapted to the big screen with Tom Blyth (Billy the Kid and The Hunger Games prequel film) and Emily Bader (My Lady Jane) in the lead roles of Alex and Poppy. The story centers around best friends Poppy and Alex—one a free spirit and the other straight laced, though with an apparent spark lingering beneath the surface—who spend their summers traveling together, meeting the aforementioned people. New cast members include Jameela Jamil (The Good Place), Lucien Laviscount (Emily in Paris) and Lukas Gage (Euphoria). (E! News)
That’s it. Enjoy!
Rueben's Ramblings 