Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the entertainment news items for this past week:

RENEWALS

Paramount+ has renewed the medical drama SkyMed for a 8-episode fourth season. (Deadline)

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been renewed for a fifth and final 6-episode season. (TV Line)

DEVELOPMENT PLANS

It looks like a follow-up to Miss Austen will be happening over on PBS. (Deadline)

TV CASTING NEWS

The upcoming Harry Potter series at HBO have added more cast members, including newcomer Lox Pratt as Draco Malfoy, Harry’s rival at Hogwarts; Johnny Flynn (Ripley) will play Draco’s father, Lucius Malfoy; Bel Powley (A Small Light) and Daniel Rigby (Renegade Nell) will play Petunia and Vernon Dursley, Harry’s Muggle guardians; Bertie Carvel (The Crown) will play Ministry of Magic boss Cornelius Fudge; Katherine Parkinson (The IT Crowd, Humans) as Ron Weasley’s mother, Molly Weasley, and newcomers Leo Earley, Alessia Leoni and Sienna Moosah as Hogwarts students Seamus Finnigan, Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown. (TV Line)

Ryan Michelle Bathe, the real life wife of Sterling K. Brown, will join the cast of his Hulu series Paradise, but the actual storyline and what character she will play is being kept under wraps. (Variety)

Ryan Robbins (Riverdale, Sanctuary) has joined the cast of the upcoming Netflix reboot of Little House on the Prairie, where he will play Russell Kind, a rough and grizzled settler with a cynical world view. (Deadline)

Rachel Brosnahan (the upcoming Superman movie and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) is set to star in and executive produce season two of Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+. Details about the new season or what role she will play are being kept under wraps. (Variety)

Outlander star Richard Rankin has joined the second season of The Forsythe Saga which will air as part of Masterpiece on PBS. The first season of this series is set to air on PBS in 2026. There are no details about the second season just yet, though. (Parade)

The upcoming Peacock series The Five-Star Weekend, an adaptation of the Elin Hilderbrand novel, has added Chloe Sevigny (Big Love and Feud), D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place) and Gemma Chan (Crazy Rich Asians) to the cast. The series will focus on Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner), a famed food influencer known for her delicious recipes, impeccable taste, and warm demeanor suffers a devastating loss. Unable to move forward, the death starts to expose the cracks in Hollis’s picture-perfect life—her strained marriage, her complicated relationship with her daughter, and her growing pursuit of validation from her followers. In an effort to overcome grief and -find herself again, Hollis gets the idea to host a weekend away at her house on Nantucket with three friends from different stages in her life: her childhood, her twenties, thirties, and one surprise fifth star. Set against a luxurious and coastal backdrop, they will mature in ways they could never imagine as boundaries are pushed and secrets are exposed. Sevigny will appear in the series regular role of Tatum McKenzie; Carden will play Brooke Kirtle and Chan will play Gigi Lang. (Variety)

The Amazon Prime drama Reacher has added new cast members for its upcoming 4th season, including Jay Baruchel (FUBAR), Sydelle Noel (GLOW), Kevin Corrigan (Poker Face), Kevin Wiseman (Alias and Marvel’s Runaways), Marc Blucas (My Life with the Walter Boys and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Kathleen Robertson (The Expanse) [among others]. In the new season, when a chance encounter with a distraught stranger on a train goes horribly wrong, Jack Reacher (series star Alan Ritchson) is drawn into a complex and deadly game that pits him against ruthless foes from the highest echelons of power. Baruchel will play Jacob Merrick, a small-town policeman; Noel will play Tamara Green, a detective with the Philadelphia police department; Corrigan will play Detective Docherty, Tamara’s partner; Weisman will play Russell Plum, a freelance journalist in Washington DC who has been surveilling a suspected CIA Black Site; Blucas will play John Samson, a U.S. Congressman and Robertson will play his wife, Elsbeth Samson. (Deadline)

Marcus Scribner (black-ish) has joined the cast of the upcoming CBS spin-off Boston Blue. He will play Jonah Silver, the youngest member of the Silver family, which the series will be focused upon. (Variety)

MADE-FOR-TV MOVIE NEWS

Hallmark Channel has a new three-part made-for-TV movie franchise called Providence Falls, based on the book series by Jude Deveraux and Tara Sheets, coming up in August that will star Katie Stevens (The Bold Type), Lachlan Quarmby (Allegiance) and Evan Roderick (Aurora Teagarden) set to star. The franchise will be set in 1844 Ireland where Liam O’Conner (Quarmby), a rogue and a thief, falls in love with Cora McLeod (Stevens), a fiery but sheltered aristocrat’s daughter, who is promised in marriage to a man she barely knows. When their plan to make a new life together in America is thwarted, the consequences ripple through time, causing everyone to relive the events of the past. Now the Angels of Destiny need Liam’s help to set things right, so they transport him to present day to help this incarnation of Cora fall in love with Finn (Roderick), the man she was destined to marry in 1844. (TV Line).

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Juliana Canfield (Succession) will star opposite 1923 hunk Brandon Sklenar in the upcoming action thriller F.A.S.T. in which a former special forces commando is tapped by the DEA to lead a black op strike team against CIA-protected drug dealers. Her role is being kept under wraps though. (Deadline)

Aaron Pierre (Rebel Ridge) and Margaret Qualley (The Substance) will star alongside Patrick Schwarzenegger (The White Lotus) in the upcoming movie Love of Your Life. Plot details are under wraps, though. (Deadline)

That’s it. Enjoy!