Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the entertainment news items for this past week:

RENEWALS/CANCELLATIONS

Netflix has given Virgin River an 8th season renewal one week after production on season 7 of the long-running series wrapped. (Deadline and TV Line)

PBS has announced that the long-running mystery series Grantchester will come to an end after its upcoming 11th season. (TV Line)

HBO Max has pulled the plug on the J.J. Abrams series Duster, which starred Lost alum Josh Holloway after only one season. (The Hollywood Reporter)

The crime drama Rebus, which stars Outlander alum Richard Rankin in the lead role, has been renewed for a second season with Rankin set to return as Detective Sergeant John Rebus. (Deadline)

Apple TV+ has given a 7th season renewal to Slow Horses. The streamer has also given the new series Murderbot, starring Alexander Skarsgard, a second season renewal. (Variety and TV Line)

BOX OFFICE MOVIE NEWS

Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing will reprise their roles of Aunt Jet and Aunt Franny in the Practical Magic sequel that will find Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, once again, playing sibling witches Sally and Gillian. Joey King will play the role of Sally’s daughter while Lee Pace (Pushing Daisies and Foundation), Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones), Xolo Mariduena (Cobra Kai) and Solly McLeod (House of the Dragon) have also joined the cast, but there are no details about their characters nor full details about the film’s plot. (Deadline)

Friday Night Lights alum Taylor Kitsch will star in the indie survival thriller Eleven Days, which will be set in Texas during the summer of 1974, following the head of the Texas Department of Corrections Jim Estelle (Kitsch), who plays a deadly game against a convicted heroin dealer, who is holding dozens of people hostage at a local penitentiary after a pre-planned escape goes awry. (Variety)

The cast of the sequel to The Devil Wears Prada just keeps growing with Lucy Liu, Justin Theroux and B.J. Novak joining the cast. Additionally, Bridgerton beauty Simone Ashley has also joined the cast. (Variety and Deadline)

Thirty years after Clueless, Paul Rudd and Jeremy Sisto will star in the upcoming feature film Rain Reign, based on the best-selling novel by author Ann M. Martin. The film tells the story of Rose Howard, a neurodivergent 12-year-old girl raised by her volatile single father (Sisto), who is forced to abandon her daily routines when a superstorm devastates their town and her beloved dog, Rain, goes missing. With the support of her uncle (Rudd), Rose embarks on a determined search for Rain — a journey that challenges her resilience and compels her to make an impossible choice between her own needs and doing what is right. (Deadline)

Looks like the folks at 20th Century Studios are planning a reimagining of Night at the Museum with a fresh story at the museum and new characters. (Variety)

Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone will join Michael B. Jordan and Kenneth Branagh in the reimagining of The Thomas Crown Affair, but there are no plot details or information on what characters they will play other than Jordan being the primary star of the flick. (Deadline)

Hailee Steinfeld (Sinners) and Miles Teller (The Gorge) will star opposite each other in the upcoming box office movie Winter Games that will be set in the high-stakes arena of the Winter Olympics, following a perpetually overlooked skier (Steinfeld) and a self-sabotaging hockey legend (Teller) who collide at their breaking points. Their unexpected connection threatens her chance for a medal and his shot at a comeback as they navigate romance and redemption in the Olympic Village. (Deadline)

TV CASTING NEWS

Timeless alum Abigail Spencer and Annie Potts have joined the cast of Best Medicine, the upcoming US adaptation of the popular British series Doc Martin. The series will center on Martin Best (Josh Charles), a brilliant surgeon who abruptly leaves his illustrious career in Boston to become the general practitioner in a quaint East Coast fishing village where he spent summers as a child. Unfortunately, Martin’s blunt and borderline rude bedside manner rubs the quirky, needy locals the wrong way, especially local school teacher Louisa Glasson (Spencer), however tenacity is the creed of everyone in their small village, and the people who live there may be exactly what the doctor ordered. Potts will play Martin’s aunt Joan, a strong, sturdy, lobster woman who still goes out every day on her boat. (Variety)

Finn Little will reprise his role of Carter in the upcoming Yellowstone spin-off series that will focus on Beth and Rip (Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser). (Deadline)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jay Duplass will have recurring roles in the upcoming young adult series Sterling Point that will air on Amazon Prime, the show is expected to follow a set of adopted twins who travel to an island on a lake that was left to them by their estranged grandfather in his will, but exact plot details are being kept under wraps. (Variety)

Tracy Ifeachor will not be returning for season two of the HBO Max medical drama The Pitt. (TV Line)

Brian Altemus (The Time Traveler’s Wife) and John Clarence Stewart (Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist) have joined the cast of the NBC medical drama Brillian Minds as series regulars for the show’s upcoming second season. Altemus will play Dr. Charlie Porter, the new neurology resident who is guarded, competitive and hiding something from his fellow doctors while Stewart will play Dr. Anthony Thorne, a mid-career ER doctor who’s grown a little too comfortable with the maxim that emergency medicine is blue-collar work. (Deadline)

John Slattery (Mad Men) and Jessica Henwick (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery) have joined the cast of the limited series Vladimir that will air on Netflix. Rachel Weisz will star in and executive produce the series that will find Leo Woodall (One Day and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy) in the title role. The series will focus on what happens as a woman’s life unravels, and she becomes obsessed with her captivating new colleague. (Deadline)

Marcia Gay Harden (So Help Me Todd), JD Pardo (High Potential and Mayans M.C.), James Remar (Dexter: Resurrection), Robert Wisdom (Prison Break and Barry), Bruce Greenwood (The Resident), Kirk Acevedo (Lioness), Ben Cotton (The Night Agent) and Jason Ralph (The Magicians and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) have all joined the cast of the upcoming Netflix drama Trinity that will follow a heroic female Naval Officer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who becomes involved with the outwardly charismatic Secretary of Defense (Richard Madden), only to discover he may be at the heart of a dangerous conspiracy. Harden will play Margaret Vandenburg, the CEO and matriarch of her family’s business empire; Pardo will play Tom Reyes, a Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy; Greenwood will play Special Agent Eric Colby; Wisdom will play Admiral Griff Tatum; Acevedo will play Captain Jock Campbell; Cotton will play Special Agent Jake Ryan; Remar will play President Paul Barnard and Ralph will play Brooks Vandenburg. (Deadline)

Relative newcomer Mika Amonsen will take over the role of Sean Reagan, the son of Danny Reagan (played by Donnie Wahlberg) in the Blue Bloods spin-off series Boston Blue. He takes over the role from Andrew Terraciano, who played the character across all 14 seasons of the original series. (TV Line)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Apple has landed for development a TV series based on the best-selling novel Funny You Should Ask by author Elissa Sussman. Bridgerton hunk Rege-Jean Page is expected to star in and produce the project that centers on a restless young journalist with big dreams who interviews a Hollywood heartthrob – and then reunites with him ten years later to discover exactly how he feels about her. (Deadline)

The hit Netflix anthology series Monsters has yet to announce the premiere date for season three, but plans are already in the works for season four with the focus being on Lizzie Bordon, the Massachusetts woman who in 1892 was accused of murdering both her father and her stepmother with an axe at their shared home. Borden was eventually acquitted of the crimes, but the brutal nature of the murders attracted nationwide attention and contributed to Borden’s place in popular culture. (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!