Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

CANCELLATION

The season finale of MacGyver set to air on April 30 will actually be the shows’ series finale, as CBS has pulled the plug on the reboot after five seasons. (TV Line)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Plans are still in the works for another NCIS spin-off: this one called NCIS: Hawaii; and sources confirm that this version will feature a woman – tentatively named Jane Tennant – in the starring role. (TV Line)

The long-gestating revival of Nash Bridges is set to go into production in May as a 2-hour movie with the hopes of that movie serving as backdoor pilot for a full series relaunch with series star Don Johnson returning. It’s believed that series regular Cheech Marin and Jeff Perry will reprise their roles along with at least 6 new characters. (TV Line)

TV CASTING NEWS

Actress Adepero Oduye (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) will appear in the Apple TV+ limited series Five Days at Memorial, playing Karen Wynn, the nurse manager of the intensive care unit at Memorial Hospital and the head of its ethics committee. (The Hollywood Reporter and The Futon Critic)

Robyn Lively (from the iconic 80’s film Teen Witch and half-sister to Blake Lively) will appear as Sara Bellum in the upcoming live-action pilot of Powerpuff for The CW. Based on the original Powerpuff Girls cartoon, fans of the franchise will recall Miss Bellum was the Mayor’s right-hand woman, though we never truly got to see her face. This version of the character is a warm and witty career woman who has a complicated romantic history with Professor Utonium, who will be played by Donald Faison. (Deadline and TV Line)

Eli Goree (The 100 and One Night in Miami) will star opposite Chloe Grace Moretz and Jack Reynor in the Amazon sci-fi thriller drama The Peripheral that will be based on the best-selling novel by Willam Gibson. The book centers on Flynne (Moretz) and her brother Burton (Reynor). Burton, a veteran of the United States Marine Corps’ elite Haptic Recon force, is hired for a security job which takes place in what he thinks is cyberspace. When Flynne temporarily takes his place, she witnesses something that might have been murder. Goree will play the character of Conner. (Deadline)

Patricia Hodge (A Very English Scandal) will take over the role of Mrs. Pumphrey in the second season of the PBS drama All Creatures Great and Small from the late, great Diana Rigg. (Deadline)

The lead cast for the CBC (the Canadian network) and BET+ drama The Porter has been announced. First, the series is about a group of 1920s railway workers who unite to form the world’s first Black union. Cast members include: Aml Ameen (I May Destroy You and the box office film Yardie) will play Junior Massey, an intelligent, smooth, ambitious, and fearless risk-taker and war veteran employed as a porter with the transcontinental railroad; Ronnie Rowe Jr. (Star Trek: Discovery) will play Massey’s war buddy Zeke Garrett; and Mouna Traoré (The Umbrella Academy) will play Massey’s wife Marlene, a worker with the Black Cross Nurses, an offshoot of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. (Deadline)

It’s been confirmed that Tatiana Maslany will not be returning to play Sister Alice in the upcoming second season of Perry Mason on HBO.  (This announcement makes sense given that Maslany will be the lead in the Disney+ series She Hulk.) (TV Line)

Game of Thrones alum Nikolaj Coster-Waldau will star in and executive produce a series adaptation of the Christina Clancy novel The Second Home that follows the Gordon and Shaw families beyond a fateful summer on Cape Cod. Told through two generations, the story explores how a devastating secret can derail young love, tear apart families, and change the fate of countless individuals forever if they let it. No network or writer is currently attached to the series. (Variety)

Hamilton alum and Tony winner Renee Elise Goldsberry is expected to join the cast of She-Hulk at Disney+, joining Orphan Black lead Tatiana Maslany, who will play the title role. The series will center on lawyer Jennifer Walters (Maslany), cousin of Bruce Banner, who inherits his Hulk powers after she receives a blood transfusion from him. Unlike Bruce, however, when she hulks out Jennifer is able to retain most of her personality, intelligence, and emotional control. Details on the character Goldsberry would play are being kept under wraps, though. (Variety)

Multi-hyphenate Wayne Brady will appear in The Good Fight, playing a new love interest for a Reddick/Lockhart staffer (but we don’t know which one). He will have the recurring role of Del Cooper, a comedian-turned-executive at a top streaming service who intersects romantically and professionally with the lawyers at the firm. (TV Line)

Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim and The Last Ship and recently married Dawson’s Creek alum Joshua Jackson) has exited the Witcher prequel series The Witcher: Blood Origin where she was set to play the warrior Elie, one of the leads in the six-episode limited series. (Variety)

Spider-Man Tom Holland will star in the 10-episode, anthology series The Crowded Room that has been ordered at Apple. The first season of the series will be based on the biography “The Minds of Billy Milligan” by Daniel Keyes, telling the story of Billy Milligan (Holland), the first person ever acquitted of a crime because of Multiple Personality Disorder (now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder). (Variety)

Bridgerton Season 2 at Netflix is officially adding four new cast members. Newcomer Charithra Chandran play Edwina Sharma, who has been taught by her older sister Kate to be the perfect debutante. She’s kind-natured and endlessly endearing. But while she may be young and naive, she also knows what she wants: a true love match. Shelley Conn (Terra Nova, The Liar and The Lottery) will play Lady Mary Sharma, whose marriage once embroiled her and her family in scandal; but now newly returned to London with her daughters, she’s forced to endure the scrutiny of the ton yet again. Calam Lynch (2020’s Black Beauty and Mrs. Wilson) will play Theo Sharpe, a hardworking printer’s assistant. And, Merlin alum Rupert Young will play Jack, the newest member of the ton with a connection to one of its most notable families. (Variety)

Robert I. Mesa has been promoted to a recurring role in Grey’s Anatomy where he was introduced as intern James Chee, the first indigenous doctor on the long-running medical series.
(Variety)

BOX OFFICE CASTING NEWS

Letitia Wright (Black Panther) and Tamara Lawrence (The Long Song) will star in the feature film Silent Twins, playing the title twin sisters in the haunting true story of June and Jennifer Gibbons, twins from the only Black family in a small town in Wales in the 1970s and ’80s. Feeling isolated from that unwelcoming community, the pair turn inward and reject communication with everyone but each other, retreating into their own fantasy world of artistic inspiration and adolescent desires. After a spree of vandalism inspired by an American boy they both idolize, the girls, now teenagers, are summarily sentenced to Broadmoor, the infamous UK psychiatric hospital, where they face the choice to separate and survive or die together. (Deadline)

Phoebe Waller-Bridge has joined the cast of the upcoming Indiana Jones 5 film that will find Harrison Ford returning in the title role. (Variety)

Helen Mirren, who won an Oscar for “The Queen,” will portray Israel’s legendary Prime Minister Golda Meir in “Golda.” The movie focuses on the intensely dramatic and high-stakes responsibilities and decisions that Meir, also known as the “Iron Lady of Israel,” faced during the Yom Kippur War. On Oct. 6, 1973, under cover of darkness, on Israel’s holiest day and during the month of Ramadan, the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan begin a surprise attack on the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Outnumbered and outgunned, Meir confronts the immediate, clear, and present danger of a ticking time-bomb that she hoped never to face. Surrounded, isolated, and frustrated by the infighting of her all-male cabinet, with little hope of rescue, one woman is in a race against time to save millions of lives on both sides of the conflict. (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

RENEWALS/CANCELLATIONS

There will be no 4th season for American Gods as Starz has pulled the plug on the series. (TV Line)

Miss Scarlet and the Duke has been given a second season renewal. (Masterpiece)

Disney+ has decided not to order a 2nd season of The Right Stuff, but Warner Bros. Television (the studio behind the series) is shopping the series to other outlets. (Deadline)

TV DEVELOPMENT NEWS

CBS has given CSI: Vegas, the reboot/revival of the original series CBS, a formal series order. The series will pick up six years after the original finale, finding vets Gil (William Petersen) and Sara (Jorja Fox) surrounded by a new crop of Sin City-based CSIs who will be played by Matt Lauria (Friday Night Lights and Kingdom), Paula Newsome (Chicago Med and NCIS), Mel Rodriguez (Last Man on Earth) and Mandeep Dhillon (After Life). Wallace Langham, who played lab tech David Hodges, will also be back as a series regular. (TV Line)

NBC has given a series order to the drama Ordinary Joe that will explore the three parallel lives of the show’s main character to be played by James Wolk (Tell Me A Story) after he makes a pivotal choice at a crossroads in his life. The series asks the question of how different life might look if you made your decision based on love, loyalty or passion. The series also stars Natalie Martinez (Under the Dome and The Fugitive), Charlie Barnett (Arrow and You) and Elizabeth Lail (Once Upon a Time and Dead of Summer). (Variety)

TV CASTING NEWS

Breakout star Rege-Jean Page will not appear in season 2 of Bridgerton, but fans of the hit Netflix streaming series shouldn’t be upset, as season 2 will focus on Anthony Bridgerton’s quest to find a wife (as the 2nd season is based on the 2nd book in the Julia Quinn book franchise) and the fact that Page’s appearance was only set for the debut season. (Variety)

Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey and Legion) will replace Armie Hammer in the upcoming Starz drama series Gaslit that is set to star Julia Roberts and Sean Penn. The series is a modern take on Watergate, focusing on the untold stories and forgotten characters of the scandal — from Nixon’s bumbling, opportunistic subordinates, to the deranged zealots aiding and abetting their crimes, to the tragic whistleblowers who would eventually bring the whole rotten enterprise crashing down. Stevens will play John Dean, the young White House Counsel torn between his ambition and his struggle with whether he can lie to protect the President. (TV Line)

Jesse Metcalfe will be leaving the Hallmark Channel series Chesapeake Shores during its upcoming 5th season. (TV Line)

Colin Firth will play Michael Peterson in a series adaptation of The Staircase, which has been ordered to series at HBO Max. The series is based on the docuseries of the same name focusing on Peterson, who was accused of murdering his wife, Kathleen, in 2001. He claimed she died after falling down the stairs at their home, but police suspected he bludgeoned her to death and staged the scene to look like an accident. (Variety)

Jason Dohring (Veronica Mars, Moonlight and iZombie) has landed a recurring role in SEAL Team where he will play LCDR Whitshaw, a charismatic and intelligent, high ranking officer with a stellar reputation, who knows how to work the regulation and system to his advantage. He has a cunning ability to cover his own tracks, which makes him a formidable adversary. (Deadline)

Amanda Seyfried will take over the role of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, from Kate McKinnon who exited the project. The series will tell the story of Holmes, the enigmatic Stanford dropout who founded medical testing start-up Theranos. She was lauded as a Steve Jobs for the next tech generation. Once worth billions of dollars, the myth crumbled when it was revealed that none of the tech actually worked, putting thousands of people’s health in grave danger. Holmes’ scam was so successful, that Theranos was at one time valued at nine-billion dollars, making her one of the richest women in the world. She was indicted by a federal jury in 2018, along with the former Theranos chief operating officer, on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Also, Naveen Andrews (Lost) will play Sunny Balwani, Holmes’ business partner and secret boyfriend throughout the rise and fall of Theranos. He served as the president and chief operating officer of the company. (Variety)

To All the Boys 2 star Jordan Fisher will have a recurring role in The Flash, playing Bart Allen, the fastest teenager on the planet and the future son of Barry (series lead Grant Gustin) and Iris (series regular Candice Patton). (TV Line)

The upcoming Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi has added a number of cast members, including Moses Ingram (The Queen’s Gambit), Joel Edgerton (Red Sparrow), Kumail Nanjiani (The Lovebirds and Big Sick), Indira Varma (For Life and Game of Thrones), Rupert Friend (Homeland), O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton), Sung Kang (Power and the Fast & Furious franchise) and Simone Kessell (Terra Nova) [among others]. Details on what roles each will play are being kept under wraps. (Variety)

Jack Reynor (Strange Angel) has joined the cast of the upcoming Amazon series adaptation of the novel The Peripheral by author Willaim Gibson. He joins Chloe Grace Moretz and Gary Carr (The Deuce and 21 Bridges), who will play the characters Flynne and Wilf respectively. Reynor will play Burton, Flynne’s brother and a US Marine Corp veteran who served in the Haptic Recon unit. (Variety)

BOX OFFICE CASTING NEWS

Russell Crowe will appear in a small but undisclosed role in Thor: Love and Thunder that finds Chris Hemsworth back as Thor, Natalie Portman back as Jane Foster (who will become a Thor) and Tessa Thompson back as Valkyrie. Christian Bale will play villain Gorr the God Butcher while Chris Pratt and other members of the Guardians of the Galaxy will also appear. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Jeremy Strong (Succession) will play Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine, in the upcoming film Splendid Solution based on the best-selling novel, which follows Dr. Salk on his quest to find a cure for the deadly virus. (Variety)

New cast members for the upcoming box office film Being the Ricardos, that will star Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, have been announced, including Tony Hale (Arrested Development and Veep), Alia Shawkat (Search Party), and Jake Lacy (High Fidelity). Hale will play I Love Lucy executive producer and head writer Jess Oppenheimer, while Shawkat and Lacy will play the show’s longtime writing partners, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr. Other cast members include Clark Gregg (Avengers franchise and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and veteran actors John Rubinstein, Linda Lavin, Robert Pine in as-yet announced roles. (The Hollywood Reporter)

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Hey All,

Here are the news items from this past week:

RENEWALS/DEVELOPMENT NEWS

CBS has renewed both FBI and its spin-off FBI: Most Wanted for a 4th and 3rd season respectively. In addition, the network has ordered a second spin-off FBI: International, which will follow a group of elite agents from the FBI’s International division as they travel the world with the mission of protecting Americans wherever they may be. (TV Line)

Ronald D. Moore has set sights on his next project. A small screen adaptation of the book franchise A Court of Thorns and Roses by author Sarah J. Maas. The series will be streamed on Hulu. (Cinema Blend)

TV CASTING NEWS

Steven Yeun and Ali Wong will team up for the Netflix 10-episode dramedy Beef that will be about two people who let a road rage incident burrow into their minds and slowly consume their every thought and action. (Deadline and TV Line)

Don Cheadle has signed on as narrator for the reboot of The Wonder Years. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Katia Winter (Blood & Treasure and Sleepy Hollow) has joined the cast of the Amazon superhero series The Boys. She will play Little Nina, a Russian mob boss with penchant for sex toys whose death ranks among the comics’ most shocking moments. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Patrick Schwarzenegger has joined the cast of the upcoming Amazon series The Terminal List that stars Chris Pratt in the lead role. Schwarzenegger will play Donny Mitchell, a baby-faced Special Warfare Operator. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Daniel di Tomasso (Major Crimes and The Witches of East End) will recur in the upcoming series The Republic of Sarah on The CW. He will play Weston, a reporter who arrives in Greylock, New Hamphsire to chronicle the life and times of the new nation. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Christopher Gorham (Covert Affairs and Insatiable) will appear in the Netflix small screen adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer, based on the best-selling novels by Michael Connelly. Gorham will play Trevor Elliott, a brilliant but enigmatic video game mogul who stands accused of killing his wife and her lover, and turns to Mickey to take on his high-profile case. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Stanley Tucci and David Tennant will appear in the Steven Moffat limited series Inside Man that has landed at Netflix. The 4-part series centers on a prisoner on death row in the U.S., a vicar in a quiet English town, and a math teacher trapped in a cellar, as they cross paths in the most unexpected way. (Deadline)

Chyler Leigh will return to Grey’s Anatomy as Lexie Gray in the April 1 episode. (The Hollywood Reporter)

The HBO series about the Los Angeles Lakes of the 1980s has added Jason Segal and Bo Burnham to its cast. Segal will play Paul Westhead, a Shakespeare professor who leaves grading papers behind to be assistant coach of the Lakers; while Burnham will play Boston Celtic star Larry Bird. (Variety)

Legendary director John Waters will appear in a guest starring role in the 4th season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The role he will play is being kept under wraps, though. (Variety)

Evan Peters, Niecy Nash, Penelope Ann Miller and Richard Jenkins have joined the cast of the latest Netflix production Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Peters will play the title role while Miller and Jenkins will play his parents Joyce and Lionel. Nash will play Glenda Cleveland, a neighbor of Dahmer’s who alerted police and the FBI to his suspicious behavior, but they did not listen. (Variety)

The Witcher has added new cast members for season 2, including Graham McTavish (Outlander), Kevin Doyle (Downton Abbey and Miss Scarlet and The Duke), Simon Callow (Outlander) and Adjoa Andoh (Bridgerton). (Facebook)

Jamie Foxx will play boxing legend Mike Tyson in a new biographical limited series simply titled Tyson. (Variety)

Naomie Harris will play a lead role in the Showtime series The May Who Fell to Earth, based on the Walter Tevis novel and the Nicolas Roeg film that starred David Bowie. The movie will star Chiwetel Ejiofor as an alien who arrives on Earth at a turning point in human evolution and must confront his own past to determine our future. Harris will play Justin Falls, a brilliant scientist and engineer who must conquer her own demons in the race to save two worlds. (Variety)

FILM CASTING NEWS

Pierce Brosnan will play Dr. Fate in the upcoming superhero movie Black Adam alongside Dwayne Johnson, who plays the title role. Dr. Fate, aka Kent Nelson, is a founding member of the Justice Society who gains superpowers through putting on the magical Helmet of Fate. (Variety)

Ron Livingson will take over the role of Henry Allen from Billy Crudup in the upcoming movie The Flash. (Variety)

Forest Whitaker will star alongside Tom Hardy in the upcoming Netflix crime drama film Havoc.  After a drug deal gone wrong, a bruised detective must fight his way through a criminal underworld to rescue a politician’s estranged son, while unraveling a deep web of corruption and conspiracy that ensnares his entire city. (Variety)

Keanu Reeves will star in and produce both a live-action film and an anime series adaptation of Brzrkr, which is a brutally epic saga about an immortal warrior’s 80,000 year fight through the ages. The man known only as ‘B’ (Reeves) is half-mortal and half-god, cursed and compelled to violence even at the sacrifice of his sanity. But after wandering the earth for centuries, B may have finally found a refuge: working for the U.S. government to fight the battles too violent and too dangerous for anyone else. In exchange, B will be granted the one thing he desires – the truth about his endless blood-soaked existence…and how to end it. (Variety)

Actress-director Emerald Fennell (the Oscar-nominated director of Promising Young Woman and actress, who played Camilla Bowles in The Crown) has been tapped to write Zatanna, a big-screen adaptation of the DC Comics heroine. (Variety)

Michael Urie (Ugly Betty), newcomer Philemon Chambers and Luke MacFarlane (Killjoys) will star in the holiday-themed romantic comedy Netflix film Single All the Way. Desperate to avoid his family’s judgment about his perpetual single status, Peter (Urie) convinces his best friend Nick (MacFarlane) to join him for the holidays and pretend that they’re now in a relationship. But when Peter’s mother sets him up on a blind date with her handsome trainer James (Chambers), the plan goes awry. The cast includes Barry Bostwick, Jennifer Coolidge, Kathy Najimy and Jennifer Robertson. (Variety)

Halle Berry will star opposite Mark Wahlberg in the upcoming Netflix spy movie Our Man from New Jersey. The film is described as a blue collar James Bond, but their roles are being kept under wraps. (Variety)

Dame Helen Mirren has joined the cast of the upcoming spin-off film Shazam: Fury of the Gods. Mireen will play the villain Hespera. (Deadline)

Katie Cassidy (Arrow) has joined the cast of the upcoming movie Agent Game that is set to star Dremot Mulroney, Mel Gibson, Katherine McNamara (Shadowhunters), Rhys Coiro (Graceland), and Annie Ilonzeh (Chicago Fire). Mulroney stars as Harris, a CIA officer involved in missions to detain and relocate foreign nationals for interrogation. When a political shift in Washington turns his allies into enemies, Harris finds himself the scapegoat for a detainee’s murder and must run from a team of operatives sent to bring him in (McNamara and Coiro), led by a ruthless double agent (Ilonzeh). Gibson appears as an intelligence official running the unsanctioned covert operation to hunt down the disgraced spy. There are currently no details on what role Cassidy will play in the film. (Deadline)

Morgan Freeman, Alfre Woodard, Common and Trevor Jackson (Grown-ish) will star in the movie Hate to See You Go that tells the story of Sonny Bell (Freeman), an aging Chicago Blues musician, who refuses to retire and defiantly hits the road with his band for one last long-shot to keep doing the only thing that makes them all feel truly alive––play Blues. (Deadline)

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

CANCELLATION

AMC has announced that Killing Eve will end after its upcoming 4th season. However, the cable network is working to develop a number of potential spinoff ideas to extend the show’s iconic universe. (TV Line)

The Canadian series Burden of Truth will come to a close at the end of its upcoming fourth season, which has yet to get a premiere date on The CW. (TV Line)

RENEWAL

Syfy has renewed Resident Alien for a second season. (Variety)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Showtime has ordered the drama series Shaka: King of the Zulu Nation with Antoine Fuqua set to direct and executive produce. The series, rooted in actual events, will chronicle Shaka’s unlikely rise to power, uniting multiple tribes across vast stretches of Africa in the early 19th century to transform his power into legend, on par with history’s most seminal figures. (Variety)

SHOW DEPARTURE

Adriyan Rae just joined the cast of Chicago Fire this season, playing medic Gianna Makey, but she is now departing the show. (TV Line)

TV SHOW CASTING NEWS

Batwoman has announced who will take over the role of Kate Kane from Ruby Rose, who left the show at the end of its debut season. Krypton actress Wallis Day will play the “altered version” of Kane moving forward. (The Hollywood Reporter)

New cast members have been added to season 6 of Outlander (which is currently under production in Scotland). Relative newcomer Jessica Reynolds will play Malva Christie, the young woman who becomes Claire’s apprentice and eventually causes great trouble on Fraser’s Ridge; Mark Lewis Jones (Chernobyl) will play Tom Christie, Malva’s father and one of Jamie’s not-so-friendly acquaintances from his Ardsmuir Prison days; and Alexander Vlahos (Merlin) will play Allan Christie, Malva’s brother, who is wary of strangers. (TV Line)

Jason Behr (the original Roswell series) will recur on Supergirl as a famous Kryptonian who helps Kara (series lead Melissa Benoist) when she faces circumstances beyond her control. (Deadline and TV Line)

Tom Hiddleston will star alongside Claire Danes in the series adaptation of The Essex Serpent, based on the Sarah Perry novel, at Apple. The drama follows newly widowed Cora (Danes) who, having been released from an abusive marriage, relocates from Victorian London to the small village of Aldwinter in Essex, intrigued by a local superstition that a mythical creature known as the Essex Serpent has returned to the area. Hiddleston will star as Will Ransome, the trusted leader of a small rural community. (Variety)

Adrien Brody will play legendary basketball coach Pat Riley in the upcoming, untitled HBO drama series about the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s, which will chronicle the professional and personal lives of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers. Also, Sally Field will star as Jessie Buss, mother of Lakers owner Jerry Buss, who will be played by John C. Reilly; and Michael Chiklis will play Celtics coach Red Auerbach. (Variety, Deadline and TV Line)

Anthony Boyle (The Plot Against America) will star in the upcoming Apple World War II drama Masters of the Air from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, joining already announced cast members Callum Turner and Austin Butler. The series is based on the novel by Donald L. Miller that follows the true story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. Boyle will star as Major Crosby. (Variety)

Natasha Lyonne (Russian Doll) will star in a 10-episode mystery series called Poker Face from Peacock. It will be a character driven, case-of-the-week mystery series. (Variety)

Pam Dawber (best known for Mork & Mindy) will join her real life husband Mark Harmon in a 4-episode arc of NCIS. She will play Marcie Warren, a seasoned investigative journalist who uses her savvy wit and down-to-earth people skills to aid in her tireless pursuit of truth. (Entertainment Weekly)

Lena Headey will star in the Spectrum-AMC Networks series Beacon 23, based on the book by Hugh Howey that follows two people whose fates become entangled after they find themselves trapped together at the end of the known universe. A tense battle of wills unfolds at the edge of space where Halan, the beacon keeper, begins to question whether Aster (Headey) is friend or foe as her ability to disguise her agenda and motives could make her a formidable opponent. (Variety)

The drama series The Man Who Fell to Earth has landed at Showtime. It was originally developed for Paramount Plus (formerly CBS All Access). The series will star Chiwetel Ejiofor. (Variety)

Dianne Wiest will star with Jeremy Renner in the upcoming Paramount Plus series Mayor of Kingstown, which follows the McLusky family – power brokers in Kingstown, Michigan where the business of incarceration is the only thriving industry. Tackling themes of systemic racism, corruption and inequality, the series provides a look at their attempt to bring order and justice to a town that has neither. Wiest will play Miriam, the McLusky family matriarch who teaches at the Kingstown Women’s Prison. (Variety)

ABC is working on a reboot of The Wonder Years, which will find Psych and The West Wing alum Dule Hill starring as patriarch Bill Williams, a music professor by day and funk musician by night. Relative newcomer Laura Kariuki (Black Lightning) as Kim Williams, confident and popular teenage daughter who is starting to rebel against the idea of going to college; Elisha “EJ” Williams as Dean William, the 12-year-old lead role; and Saycon Sengbloh (In the Dark) as matriarch Lillian Williams. (TV Line)

Vera Farmiga will star in the lead role of the Apple drama Five Days at Memorial that is based on the novel by Sheri Funk that chronicles the first five days in a New Orleans, LA, hospital after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. When the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers were forced to make life-and-death decisions that haunted them for years to come. Farmiga will play Dr. Anna Pou. (Variety)

BOX OFFICE CASTING NEWS

More cast members have been added to the upcoming box office film Mr. Malcolm’s List, which is based on the novel by Suzanne Allain. Zawe Ashton (Wanderlust and Guerrilla), Ashley Park (Emily in Paris) and Theo James (the Divergent franchise) have joined the cast. Ashton will play Julia, a society lady jilted by London’s most eligible bachelor Mr. Malcolm (Sope Dirisu from Gangs of Longdon), when she fails to meet one of the items on his list of requirements for a bride. Feeling shunned and humiliated, she enlists her friend Selina (Frieda Pinto from Slumdog Millionaire) to help her take revenge on Mr. Malcolm by tricking him into thinking he has found his perfect match. The plan appears to be working when Henry (Theo James) threatens Julia’s scheme by courting Selina as well. After the bumbling Lord Cassidy (Oliver Jackson-Cohen from The Haunting of Bly Manor) begins meddling in the foursome’s affairs, the course of true love becomes rocky. Details on what part Park will play has yet to be released. (Variety)

Newcomer Uche Agada will make his onscreen debut in the upcoming box office movie from Disney about Giannis Antetokounmpo, the NBA great nicknamed the “Greek Freak.” Yetide Badaki (American Gods) and Dayo Okeniyi (Shades of Blue) will as Antetokounmpo’s mother Vera and father Charles. (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!

Read Full Post »

Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

RENEWAL

No great surprise: CBS has given a season 2 order for The Equalizer. (Variety)

Outlander has been renewed for a 7th season. The show is currently in production for season 6. (TV Line)

CANCELLATION

The USA Network has announced the upcoming 5th season of Queen of the South, which premieres on April 7, and consists of 10 episodes, will be the show’s last. (Variety)

TV SERIES DEVELOPMENT NEWS

A spin-off series to The Boys is nearing a series order at Amazon. The series will be set at America’s only college exclusively for young adult superheroes (and run by Vought International), and much like its predecessor it will be an irreverent, R-rated show that explores the lives of hormonal, competitive Supes as they put their physical, sexual, and moral boundaries to the test, competing for the best contracts in the best cities. (Variety)

The TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “Wild Card” book series is moving from Hulu to Peacock. The show remains in development as a new writer is ongoing. In the series, an alien pathogen known as the Wild Card virus is released over Manhattan in 1946, altering the course of human history. The virus rewrites DNA, mutating its survivors. A lucky few are granted awe-inspiring superpowers, while the sad majority are left with often repulsive physical deformities. (Variety)

TV CASTING NEWS

Sarah Drew will reprise her role of Dr. April Kepner in an upcoming episode of Grey’s Anatomy. (Deadline and TV Line)

Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars) will star in the upcoming AMC-Alibi series Ragdoll, which is based on the novel by Daniel Cole. The series will focus on the murder and dismemberment of six people, who are sewn into the shape of one grotesque body: nicknamed the Ragdoll. Assigned to the shocking case are DS Nathan Rose, recently reinstated to the London Met; his best friend and boss, DI Emily Baxter; and the unit’s new recruit, DC Lake Edmunds (who will be played by Hale). The “Ragdoll Killer” taunts the police by sending them a list of his next victims, with Rose’s name among them. And with those victims to protect, our heroes soon come under intense public scrutiny. (Variety)

Kaley Cuoco will star as legendary singer-actress-animal rights activist Doris Day in a limited series that will be based on the 1976 biography by A.E. Hotchner. The series has yet to be picked up by any network, though. (Variety)

Michelle Gomez (Doctor Who and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) has joined the cast of the third season of Doom Patrol, appearing as Madame Rouge, the eccentric villainess, who arrives at Doom Manor with a very specific mission. Doom Patrol will move to HBO Max exclusively for its 3rd season after 2 seasons on the now-defunct DC Universe. (TV Line)

The limited series Lady in the Lake, based on the Laura Lipman novel, has been given a straight-to-series order at Apple with Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o set to star. The series akes place in 1960s Baltimore, where an unsolved murder pushes housewife and mother Maddie Schwartz (Portman) to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist and sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood (Nyong’o), a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda. (Variety)

Netflix has another new series coming to the streaming service: First Kill, based on the short story by Victoria “V.E.” Schwab. In the show, when it’s time for teenage vampire Juliette Fairmont (relative newcomer Sarah Catherine Hook) to make her first kill so she can take her place among a powerful vampire family, she sets her sights on a new girl in town, Calliope Burns (Imani Lewis from the box office film Eighth Grade and the TV series Star). But much to Juliette’s surprise, Calliope is a vampire hunter, from a family of celebrated slayers. Both find that the other won’t be so easy to kill and, unfortunately, way too easy to fall for. (Variety)

Paul Bettany and Claire Foy will the BBC One and Amazon Prime drama A Very British Scandal, portraying the Duchess and Duke of Argyll, aka the key players in one of Britain’s most salacious divorce cases of the 20th century. (TV Line)

Katrina Law (Arrow and Hawaii Five-0) will have a recurring role in the current 18th season of NCIS, playing Special Agent Jessica Knight, a formidable woman whose specialty is hostage negotiations. There is the potential for Law to return as a series regular for the show’s 19th season. (TV Line and Deadline)

Dakota Fanning will join Andrew Scott and Johnny Flynn in the Showtime drama Ripley that will be based on the Patrick Highsmith novels about Tom Ripley. Scott will play Tom Ripley, a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, who is hired by a wealthy businessman to travel to Italy to try to convince his vagabond son to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit. Fanning will play Marge Sherwood, an American living in Italy who suspects darker motives underlie Tom’s affability. (Variety)

The planned NBC drama about the Dan Brown character Robert Langdon is moving to the streamer Peacock and will follow the early adventures of famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (to be played by Ashley Zukerman), who must solve a series of deadly puzzles to save his kidnapped mentor and thwart a chilling global conspiracy. (Variety)

The CW has announced the cast for its planned Powerpuff Girls live-action pilot. They include Chloe Bennet (Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD), Dove Cameron (from the Disney movie franchise Descendants) and Yana Perrault (Broadway’s Jagged Little Pill) as Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup Utonium, respectively. This series will pick up with the titular heroines as disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime fighting. (TV Line)

Dominique Fishback will star alongside Samuel L. Jackson in the Apple drama series The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, based on the novel by Walter Mosley. Jackson will play the title character, a 91 year old man forgotten by his family, by his friends, by even himself. On the brink of sinking even deeper into a lonely dementia, Grey experiences a seismic shift when he’s given the tremendous opportunity to briefly regain his memories, and uses this precious and fleeting lucidity to solve his nephew’s death and come to terms with his past. Fishback will play Robyn, a friend of the family who helps Ptolemy. (Variety)

Josh Holloway (Lost) will star in the lead role in the HBO Max series Duster that will be set in the 1970’s Southwest, exploring the life of a getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate. (Variety)

Lexi Underwood (Little Fires Everywhere) will play Malia Obama in the upcoming Showtime anthology series The First Lady. (Variety)

Mandy Patinkin will appear in the upcoming season of The Good Fight, playing Hal Wackner, a layman with no legal training who spontaneously decides to open a court in the back of a copy shop. Against all odds, the court catches on, and the team at Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart find themselves contending with judgements that mean nothing legally, but are honored by much of the entertained public. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

The long-in-the-works NBC drama LA Brea will star Eoin Macken (The Night Shift) and Natalie Zea (Justified and The Detour). The show will focus on what happens when a massive sinkhole mysteriously opens in Los Angeles, it tears a family in half, separating mother and son from father and daughter. Macken and Zea will play the father and mother: Gavin and Eve Harris. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Chelsea Harris, who recurs as Sykes, one of Wolford’s right hand people on Big Alice in the TNT series Snowpiercer will return as a regular for the show’s third season. (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Tom Mison (Sleepy Hollow) will appear in the second season of the Apple TV series See. (TV Line)

Famke Janssen (X-Men and Taken franchises) will recur in the Spectrum Original series Long Slow Exhale that follows J.C. Abernathy (Rose Rollins from The L Word), the successful head coach of a competitive women’s college basketball team who finds herself in the middle of a potentially career shattering sexual abuse scandal. Sorting through the secrets to unravel the truth, she is forced to make decisions that will affect her, her family and the young female athletes who depend on her. Janssen will play Dr. Melinda Barrington, Chancellor of the University. (Deadline)

BOX OFFICE CASTING NEWS

Tiffany Haddish will star in the Netflix feature adaptation of Mystery Girl, which is based on the Dark Horse comic created by Paul Tobin and Alberto Alburquerque. Haddish will star as Trine who, living off the grid in Los Angeles as a street psychic, has no memory of who she is or where she came from but is guided by an omniscient VOICE in her head that knows everyone’s business and everyone’s darkest secrets. When a down on his luck LAPD officer, Cooper, seeks out Trine in hopes that she’ll help him crack a case, the two are framed for murder and must work together to clear their names and solve the ultimate mystery: the one behind Mystery Girl herself. (Deadline)

Elle Fanning will star as Ali MacGraw in the box office movie Francis and the Godfather that will be about the making of the classic mobster film. (Variety)

Mission Impossible 7 has added to its cast. Those new cast members include Cary Elwes (Princess Bride), Indira Varma (Game of Thrones), Charles Parnell (The Last Ship) and Mark Gatiss (Sherlock). They join returning stars Tom Cruise, Vanessa Kirby, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett, and Henry Czerny along with newcomers Pom Klementieff (Guardians of the Galaxy), Hayley Atwell (MCU alum), Shea Whigham (Perry Mason) and Esai Morales (who took over for Nicholas Hoult) as the film’s villain. (Variety)

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CANCELLATION

The FX drama Pose will end with its upcoming third season. (Variety)

RENEWAL

After only one episode of Superman & Lois, The CW has given the new superhero series a 2nd season order. (TV Line)

TV CASTING NEWS

Ray Liotta will star alongside Taron Egerton in the upcoming Apple drama series In With the Devil. The six-episode series is based on the 2010 novel “In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption” by James Keene and Hillel Levin that tells the story of Keene’s real life when he was sentenced to prison but offered his freedom in exchange for coaxing a confession out of a fellow inmate, a suspected serial killer. Egerton will star as Keene while Liotta will play Big Jim, Keene’s father. (Variety)

Timothy Spall will star alongside Lesley Manville in the upcoming adaptation of Magpie Murders. He will play detective Atticus Pünd in the mystery-within-a-mystery, which stars Manville as book editor Susan Ryeland, who sits down to read the latest manuscript written by her popular author, Alan Conway, the writer behind the popular Atticus Pünd mystery series. When she discovers that its final chapter is missing, she goes to Conway’s house only to find his dead body. The story goes back and forth between the cozy case Pünd was trying to crack and Ryeland’s investigation of what happened to Conway. (Variety)

Edie Falco will portray Hillary Clinton in the upcoming FX anthology series Impeachment: American Crime Story that will detail the events surrounding the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Also Beanie Feldstein will star as Monica Lewinsky, while Clive Owen will play Bill Clinton, Sarah Paulson will play Linda Tripp, Margo Martindale will play Lucianne Goldberg, Annaleigh Ashford will play Paula Jones, Billy Eichner will play Matt Drudge and Betty Gilpin will play Ann Coulter. (Variety)

A spin-off of the Amazon TV series Bosch has been ordered to series at IMDb TV that will find Titus Welliver reprising his role of the lead character. Bosch will end with its 7th season this summer. The new series will follow Harry Bosch (Welliver) as he embarks on the next chapter of his career and finds himself working with his one-time enemy and top-notch attorney Honey “Money” Chandler (Mimi Rogers). With a deep and complicated history between this unlikely pair, they must work together to do what they can agree on – finding justice. (Variety)

Actress Indira Varma (best known for her role on Game of Thrones) has joined the Disney+ drama Obi-Wan Kenobi, but details about what character she will play is being kept under wraps. (Deadline and Variety)

Apple has ordered 8 half-hour episodes of a new anthology series from GLOW creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch entitled Roar that will boast cast members Nicole Kidman, Cynthia Erivo, Merrit Weaver and Alison Brie. The anthology series is described as “darkly comic feminist fables” based on Cecilia Ahern’s book of short stories of the same name. (Variety)

Dakota Fanning will play Susan Ford in the upcoming Showtime anthology The First Lady. Susan is the only daughter of Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer) and President Gerald Ford (Aaron Eckhart). (Variety)

Gugu Mbatha-Raw (The Morning Show) and David Oyelowo will star in The Girl Before, the 4-part psychological thriller from HBO Max and BBC One that is based on the bestselling novel of the same name that follows Jane (Mbatha-Raw), who moves into a beautiful, ultra-minimalist house designed by an enigmatic architect (Oyelowo). There’s just one catch: occupants have to abide by his list of exacting rules. Jane starts to feel the house changing her in unexpected ways but, when she makes the shocking discovery that her predecessor Emma died in the house, she’s forced to confront unnerving similarities. (Variety)

Riley Keough (The Girlfriend Experience) and Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians and Fresh Off the Boat) have joined the cast of the Amazon thriller series The Terminal List that stars Chris Pratt as James Reece, who after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission, returns home to his family with conflicting memories of the event and questions about his culpability. Keough will play Lauren Reece, an elite triathlete and a warrior in her own right, who has balanced her career with raising their daughter Lucy and providing vital support to other platoon families when her husband James and his SEAL Troop are deployed. While the majority of SEAL marriages fall apart, Lauren and James have made it through on honesty, mental toughness, and undying love. While Wu will play Katie Buranek, a risk-seeking war correspondent who uses her byline to speak truth to power, who left her desk at a prestigious news outlet to pursue high-impact stories on her own terms. Now at a crossroads in her career, she sets out to bring the truth about Reece and the conspiracy he’s fighting against out into the open. (Variety and TV Line)

Sissy Spacek and Ed O’Neill will star in the lead roles of the upcoming Amazon series Lightyears that follows Irene (Spacek) and Franklin (O’Neill) York, a couple who years ago discovered a chamber buried in their backyard which inexplicably leads to a strange, deserted planet. They’ve carefully guarded their secret ever since, but when an enigmatic young man enters their lives, the Yorks’ quiet existence is quickly upended and the mysterious chamber they thought they knew so well turns out to be much more than they could ever have imagined. (Variety)

BOX OFFICE CASTING NEWS

Billy Bob Thornton, Alfre Woodard and Rege-Jean Page (The Duke of Hastings from Bridgerton) will star alongside Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana De Armas in the box office film The Gray Man, which is based on the debut novel by Mark Greaney that focuses on freelance assassin and former CIA operative Court Gentry (Gosling) as he’s hunted across the globe by Lloyd Hansen (Evans), a former cohort at the CIA. (Variety)

Bruce Willis, Luke Wilson and Devon Sawa will appear in the action thriller film Gasoline Alley. Sawa stars as Jimmy Jayne, a bruise-fisted boss-type who becomes implicated in the triple murder of three Hollywood starlets drowned in a luxury hotel pool. As the prime suspect for homicide detectives Freeman (Willis) and Vargas (Wilson), Jimmy takes up his own rogue investigation, bending the law in ways the police can’t in order to clear his name. (Variety)

Young actor Joshua Caleb Johnson (The Good Lord Bird) has landed a key role in the upcoming box office film Bingo. Johnson will play Caleb, a teenager being raised by a single mother and living in his grandmother’s home. He’s torn between his anger at the tough hand he’s been dealt in life, and longs for connection, love and acceptance. (Variety)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Cynthia Erivo have joined the cast of Disney’s upcoming live-action retelling of Pinocchio. Gordon-Levitt will provide the voice of Jiminy Cricket while Erivo will play the Blue Fairy. The cast of this film already includes Tom Hanks as Geppetto and Luke Evans as The Coachman. (Variety)

Patricia Clarkson will play Lilly Ledbetter, the fair pay pioneer for whom President Obama named a piece of legislation in 2009. The indie film Lilly will follow one woman’s fight for justice, while also painting a heartbreaking personal story and the tension-filled stakes behind her political achievements. (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!

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RENEWAL

BET has renewed the Tyler Perry political soap The Oval for a third season. (Deadline and TV Line)

CANCELLATION

The Jordan Peele reboot of The Twilight Zone won’t be returning following its two-season run. (Variety)

NETWORK RELOCATION

After 6 seasons on TV Land, the 7th and final season of Younger will debut on Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access). However, the exact premiere date has yet to be announced. There will be 12 episodes in this final season. The show will air on TV Land, but that won’t happen until later this year. (TV Line)

TV CASTING NEWS

Actresses Vanessa Rubio and Peyton List have been promoted to series regular status on the Netflix drama Cobra Kai. Rubio plays Carmen Diaz, mom to Miguel while List plays Tory Nichols, one of the Cobra Kai students. New additions to the show will include actor Dallas Dupree Young (The Fosters) and actress Oona O’Brien (who has appeared in theatrical presentations of Annie and School of Rock). Young will recur as Kenny, a bullied new kid in school who turns to karate as a way to defend himself while O’Brien will recur as Devon, a potential new karate student who is relentlessly competitive, a quick study, and equally quick-tempered when she’s provoked. (Variety)

Actors Austin Butler (The Shannara Chronicles and the upcoming Elvis biopic from Baz Luhrmann) and Callum Turner (the latest box office movie EMMA.) will play leads in the upcoming Apple drama Masters of the Air from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. The mini-series is based on the book by Donald L. Miller, which follows the true story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. Butler will play Major Gale Cleven and Turner will play Major John Egan. (Variety)

Actor Theo James (Divergent franchise and Downton Abbey) and Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones) have landed the lead roles in the upcoming HBo series based on the novel “The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. The series tells the story of Clare (Leslie) and Henry (James), and a marriage with a problem: time travel. (Variety)

Additional cast members for the upcoming Showtime anthology series The First Lady have been announced: O-T Fagbenle (The Handmaid’s Tale) will recur as President Barack Obama while Gillian Anderson (The Crown and The X-Files) will play First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The cast already includes Viola Davis as First Lady Michelle Obama, Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford and Aaron Eckhart as President Gerald Ford. (Variety)

Actor Jeremy Renner (MCU franchise) will star in the Taylor Sheridan (the man behind the TV series Yellowstone) drama Mayor of Kingstown, which will air on Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access). The show will follow the McLusky family – power brokers in Kingstown, Michigan – where the business of incarceration is the only thriving industry. Tackling themes of systemic racism, corruption and inequality, the series provides a look at their attempt to bring order and justice to a town that has neither. (Variety)

The Yellowstone spin-off currently titled 6666 will be set up at Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access), and will be focused on the Ranch 6666, the one ranch in America that is most steeped in the history of the West. Still operating as it did two centuries before, and encompassing an entire county, the 6666 is where the rule of law and the laws of nature merge in a place where the most dangerous thing one does is the next thing. The 6666 is synonymous with the merciless endeavor to raise the finest horses and livestock in the world, and ultimately where world class cowboys are born and made. (Variety)

Paramount+ has picked up the TV show Halo, based on the popular and long-running sci-fi video game series on Microsoft’s Xbox, from Showtime. Actor Pablo Schrieber (American Gods and Orange Is the New Black) will play Master Chief, the lead protagonist, who is a helmeted super-soldier known as a Spartan. Actress Natascha McElhone (Designated Survivor) will play two characters: Dr. Catherine Halsey, the creator of the Spartans soldiers, and Cortana, the most advanced AI in human history who is potentially the key to the survival of the human race. (Variety)

Amblin Television will develop and produce a TV show based on the best-selling gritty historical fiction mystery franchise from author Walter Mosley focusing on Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, one of literature’s most popular Black investigators. The drama will be set in 1950’s Los Angeles. (Variety)

The Amazon anthology series Modern Love has added more cast members for its second season, including Gbenga Akinnagbe (The Deuce), Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody), Tom Burke (C.B. Strike), Dominique Fishback (Judas and the Black Messiah and Project Power) and Garrett Hedlund (Mudbound). (Variety)

Actor Matt Lauria (Kingdom and Friday Night Lights) has joined the cast of the upcoming Amazon drama Outer Range, which will star Josh Brolin as Royal Abbott, a rancher fighting for his land and family, who discovers an unfathomable mystery at the edge of Wyoming’s wilderness. Lauria will recur Trevor Tillerson, the rival family to the Abbotts. Trevor is the eldest of the three brothers and the temperamental workhorse of his family. He takes out his frustrations on his neighbors, the Abbotts, and his aggression manages to move the simmering feud to a rolling boil whenever he crosses paths with an Abbott. (TV Line)

Actress Torri Higginson has been promoted to series regular for season 2 of the Canadian medical drama Transplant. (The Futon Critic and Deadline)

Actor Miguel Gomez (Southpaw and L.A.’s Finest) has joined the cast as series regular on FBI: Most Wanted. He will play Special Agent Ivan Ortiz, a former LAPD Gang Unit officer born and raised in Los Angeles. After a stint with the FBI’s counter-terror unit in Washington, DC, he joins the team to be with the “best of the best” who track down the country’s most wanted fugitives. (The Futon Critic and Deadline)

Actress Abigail Spencer (Timeless and Reprisal) will recur on the upcoming new ABC drama Rebel, starring Katey Sagal (Sons of Anarchy) as a legal advocate with a blue collar background, who helps those in need without a law degree. Spencer will play Misha, a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon who has a painful romantic history with Nate (Kevin Zegers) but can’t resist getting involved with studying the Stonemore heart valve for fear that she may have inadvertently harmed hundreds of patients. (The Futon Critic and Deadline)

Actor Taylor Kitsch (21 Bridges and Friday Night Lights) will star opposite Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy) in the Amazon conspiracy thriller series The Terminal List, an adaptation of the best-selling novel by Jack Carr that follows James Reece (Pratt) after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. Reece returns home to his family with conflicting memories of the event and questions about his culpability. Kitsch will play Ben Edwards, a former SEAL and Reece’s best friend, who is now a member of CIA Ground Branch, using his intelligence access and operator skillset to help Reece seek his vengeance. (The Futon Critic and Deadline)

Actor Daniel Sunjata (Graceland and Manifest) has joined the cast of Power Book II: Ghost for the show’s second season. He will play Mecca, who will be the Big Bad in the new season. Mecca is calculated, manipulative, and dangerous. He reemerges in New York at the exact moment the Tejadas need to fill the void of a new product supplier; but when his mysterious past starts to become exposed, it reveals the drug business might not be his only end game with this family. (Deadline)

New cast members have been added to the new installment of Starz’s reimagined Step Up series – inspired by the film franchise. Those new additions include Keiynan Lonsdale (The Flash and the Divergent franchise), Enrique Murciano (Without a Trace and Tell Me Your Secrets) as well as dancer Rebbi Rosie (who has performed with Beyonce, Pharrell, J. Lo and Nicki Minaj). The original series – Step Up: High Water – starred the late Naya Rivera in the lead role alongside singer-songwriter-actor Ne-Yo. Christina Milian will take over Rivera’s role of Collette Jones. The show focuses on the students and teachers at High Water Performing Arts School in Atlanta. Lonsdale will take over the role of Tal, once an outcast from Ohio, now the lead dancer; and Murciano will play Cruz, a man hoping to carve his face into the Mount Rushmore of high profile, celebrity lawyers and who will do whatever it takes to claw his way to the primetime status of Cochran, Dershowitz, and Geragos, finally joining the pantheon of litigation gods. Starz will air the first two seasons of the series, which aired on YouTube, beginning Friday, March 5 across all platforms. (Deadline)

BOX OFFICE CASTING NEWS

George Clooney and Julia Roberts will appear in the new romantic comedy film Ticket to Paradise, appearing as a divorced couple who journey to Bali to stop their daughter from getting married. (Deadline and Variety)

Actress Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil franchise) and actor Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) will appear in the box office movie In the Lost Lands, based on the story by George R.R. Martin. In the movie a queen, desperate to fulfill her love, makes a daring play: she hires the sorceress Gray Alys (Jovovich), a woman as feared as she is powerful. Sent to the ghostly wilderness of the Lost Lands, Alys and her guide, the drifter Boyce (Bautista), must outwit and outfight man and demon in this fable that explores the nature of good and evil, debt and fulfillment, love and loss. (Variety)

It looks like Ray Donovan will continue on after all. After the surprise cancellation after 7 seasons, the Showtime series will return as a movie, starring Liev Schreiber in the lead role. Schreiber will also co-write the script. The film picks up where Season 7 left off, with Mickey (Jon Voight) in the wind and Ray determined to find and stop him before he can cause any more carnage. It will also weave together the present-day fallout from the Donovan/Sullivan feud with Ray and Mickey’s origin story from 30 years ago. (Variety)

Actress Rachel Zegler, who will be seen in the upcoming remake of West Side Story, has landed her next role. She has joined the cast of Shazam: Fury of the Gods. (Deadline)

Actress Judy Greer will appear in the Disney sequel to Stargirl, playing the role of Ana opposite Grace VanderWaal who plays the lead character. The sequel will follow Stargirl’s journey out of Mica and into a bigger world of music. Ana is Stargirl’s mother and the duo will be moving to Los Angeles, where the latter is working on a film. (Deadline)

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Here are the news items for this past week:

RENEWAL

Netflix has renewed the fantasy drama Fate: The Winx Saga for a 2nd season. (Variety)

CANCELLATION

Seemingly due to low ratings, NCIS: New Orleans will come to an end at the conclusion of its current 7th season, ending for good on May 16, which will mark the show’s 155th episode. (TV Line and Deadline)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

A new NCIS spinoff set in Hawaii is in development at CBS. Few plot details are available other than it will follow a team of Naval criminal investigators who operate on the Hawaiian islands. (Variety)

Actor Billy Campbell (Once and Again and The 4400) has landed the lead role in the ABC drama pilot National Parks, which includes Kevin Costner among its writers and executive producers. The show will take a darker, more sinister look at the parks that attract a vast array of criminal activity, following the small group of elite NPS agents as they solve these crimes while protecting these national treasures. Campbell will star as Cal Foster, an experienced ISB special agent who has worked in the field for years, but is now stepping into a new leadership role. He wonders how the team he’s worked alongside will respond to taking orders from him, but Cal is determined to honor the position and help his fellow agents no matter what. (Variety)

CBS is also plotting another spin-off to the FBI franchise. FBI: International would deal with the agents that make up the international branch of the FBI. (Variety)

HBO Max has given a series order to Subject to Change, a new drama from J.J. Abrams, which will follow a desperate college student who signs up for a clinical trial that is the starting point for a reality-bending adventure. (Variety)

Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access) is looking at a possible Criminal Minds reboot as a limited event series. (TV Line)

TV CASTING NEWS

Actress Simone Ashley (Sex Education and the UK original Broadchurch) will play Kate Sharma (nee Sheffield), a love interest for the highly eligible Anthony Bridgerton (series regular Jonathan Bailey) in the upcoming season two of Bridgerton. Kate is a smart, headstrong London newcomer “who suffers no fools; Anthony very much included.” Kate is among a number of new characters expected for the 2nd season, which will be based on the second novel in the franchise of books by Julia Quinn entitled “The Viscount Who Loved Me.” (Deadline and TV Line)

New cast members for the upcoming Black Lightning spin-off series Painkiller [Jordan Calloway will play the titular character] have been announced. They include Sibongile Mlambo (Teen Wolf, Siren and Lovecraft Country), Alexander Hodge (Insecure, Tommy and Modern Family) and James Roch (The Night Shift). Mlambo will play Maya, a strikingly attractive woman who is icy and mysterious; Hodge will play Philky, a once homeless alcoholic from Gotham who now works as an inconspicuous bartender and is an exceptionally gifted tech wiz; and Roch will play Cousin Donald, a larger-than-life, gentle giant who was a medic in the Marines. (Deadline)

Actress Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife) has joined the 3rd season of Snowpiercer. She will play a character named Asha, but details are being kept under wraps. (Deadline)

Actor Aaron Eckhart will star opposite Viola Davis and Michelle Pfeiffer in the Showtime anthology series The First Lady, a revelatory reframing of American leadership, told through the lens of the women at the heart of the White House. Season 1 will focus on Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford (Pfeiffer) and Michelle Obama (Davis). Eckhart will play President Gerald R. Ford Jr. Also, Judy Greer will take on the role of Nancy Howe, Ford’s trusted confidante and social secretary. Greer takes over the role from Pamela Adlon, who had to drop out of the project due to a scheduling conflict. (Deadline and Variety)

Actress Minnie Driver has joined the cast of the Amazon series Modern Love for the drama’s second season, but details about the character for which she will play is being kept under wraps. The series depicts an exploration of love in all of its complicated and beautiful forms, with each standalone episode based on some of the most popular stories from the New York Times column on which it is based. (Variety)

Actress Aunjanue Ellis and Andrene Ward-Hammond have been added to the cast of the upcoming AMC drama 61st Street, which has been ordered as a two-season television event with eight episodes per season. The series is a courtroom drama that follows Moses Johnson (Tosin Cole), a promising, black high school athlete, who is swept up into the infamously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system. Taken by the police as a supposed gang member, he finds himself in the eye of the storm as police and prosecutors seek revenge for the death of an officer during a drug bust gone wrong. Ellis will play Martha Roberts, a candidate for alderman on the South Side who is very skilled at telling the voting public that her drive and ambition will be placed at their service. The wife of Franklin Roberts (Courtney B. Vance) and a former stay-at-home mom to their autistic son, David, Martha is torn between her burgeoning career in politics and the needs of her family. Ward-Hammond will play Norma Johnson, a cleaning lady at the local courthouse and a dedicated mother to her two sons, Moses and Joshua (Bentley Green). (Variety)

Netflix has ordered a live action series centered around Wednesday Addams (from The Addams Family). Wednesday will be a young adult TV series about a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy. She attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore. Smallville executive producers Al Gough and Miles Millar created the series and will serve as showrunners and executive producers while Tim Burton is set to direct and executive produce. (Variety)

A series based on the Sally Rooney book “Conversations With Friends” will move forward via Hulu-BBC Three and has announced cast members, which include Alison Oliver, Sasha Lane, Joe Alwyn and Jemima Kirke in four of the lead roles. The series follows Frances (Oliver), a 21 year old college student, as she navigates a series of relationships that force her to confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time. Her ex-girlfriend, now best friend, Bobbi (Lane) is self-assured, outspoken and compelling. Though they broke up three years ago, Frances and Bobbi are virtually inseparable and perform spoken word poetry together in Dublin. It’s at one of their shows that they meet Melissa (Kirke), an older writer, who is fascinated by the pair. Bobbi and Frances start to spend time with Melissa and her husband, Nick (Alwyn), a handsome but reserved actor. While Melissa and Bobbi flirt with each other openly, Nick and Frances embark on an intense secret affair that is surprising to them both. Soon the affair begins to test the bond between Frances and Bobbi, forcing Frances to reconsider her sense of self, and the friendship she holds so dear. The series is scheduled to premiere in 2022 on Hulu in the US and premiere on BBC Three and air on BBC One in the UK. (Variety)

Actor John Wesley Shipp will, once again, reprise his role of The Flash (aka Jay Garrick) in The CW superhero series Stargirl. He will appear in a pivotal flashback episode that establishes the Golden Age Flash as a member of Earth-2’s Justice Society of America, bringing Stargirl (series lead Brec Bassinger) into The CW’s post-Crisis universe alongside existing shows The Flash, Superman & Lois, Batwoman, Black Lightning, Supergirl and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. (Entertainment Weekly)

Kristin Bell (Veronica Mars herself) and Tom Riley (Da Vinci’s Demons and the upcoming series The Nevers) will appear together in the Netflix limited series The Woman in the House. The tagline for the series is: For heartbroken Anna (Bell), every day is the same. She sits with her wine, staring out the window, watching life go by without her. But when a handsome neighbor moves in across the street, Anna starts to see a light at the end of the tunnel. That is until she witnesses a gruesome murder… Or did she? You guessed it Riley will play the new neighbor, a charming and handsome single dad. But is this undeniably sexy widower too good to be true? (Deadline and The Futon Critic)

Actor Josh Lucas (Sweet Home Alabama and Ford v Ferrari) will star opposite Rose Rollins (The L Word and Condor) in the upcoming drama Long Slow Exhale from Spectrum Originals that follows J.C. Abernathy (Rollins), the successful head coach of a competitive women’s college basketball team who finds herself in the middle of a potentially career shattering sexual abuse scandal. Sorting through the secrets to unravel the truth, she is forced to make decisions that will affect her, her family and the young female athletes who depend on her. Lucas will play Hilman Ford, athletic director of the university. (Deadline)

MacGyver will welcome Ernie Hudson and Wendy Raquel Robinson as Milton and Lauretta Bozer, the parents of Wilt (series regular Justin Hires). They will guest star in an episode set to air in the Spring. (TV Line)

MOVIE CASTING NEWS

Bridgerton hunk Regé-Jean Page (the Duke of Hastings) has joined the cast of the upcoming movie adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons (the role playing game that has been around for over 45 years), playing a lead role in the movie. He joins previously announced cast members Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez and Justice Smith. (Deadline)

Award winner Regina King is set to star in and produce the box office film entitled Shirley where she will play legendary Shirley Chisholm, America’s first Black congresswoman. (Variety)

Soap actress Sasha Calle (The Young and the Restless) has landed the role of Supegirl in the upcoming movie installment of The Flash. Calle will be the first Latina ever to portray the superhero. (Variety)

Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington will star in the Netflix movie The School for Good and Evil that is based on the young adult fantasy novel by Soman Chainani, which follows best friends Sophie and Agatha as they are kidnapped to the School for Good and Evil. After their fortunes are reversed, their friendship is put to the test as the duo attempts to return home. Washington will play Professor Dovey while Theron will play Lady Lesso. (Variety)

Rachel McAdams and youngster Abby Ryder Fortson (she played little Cassie in the Ant-Man films) have been cast in the movie adaptation of the Judy Blume coming-of-age book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Fortson will play Margaret Simon, a sixth-grade girl who is going through puberty and searches the universe for any answers she can find while McAdams will play Margaret’s mother, Barbara. (Variety)

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

NEW DEVELOPMENT

The creators of Game of Thrones are developing a series adaptation of the Richard Power novel “The Overstory” for Netflix. The novel was published in 2018 and won the Pulitzer Prize tells the story of a world alongside ours that is vast, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. A handful of disparate people learn how to see that world and are drawn into its unfolding catastrophe. (Variety)

Amazon has ordered an adaptation of the Jenny Han YA novel “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” This adaptation has been given an 8-episode order. This project is described as a multigenerational drama that hinges on a love triangle between one girl and two brothers, the ever-evolving relationship between mothers and their children, and the enduring power of strong female friendship. It is a coming-of-age story about first love, first heartbreak, and the magic of that one perfect summer. (Variety)

CBS has a revival of CSI in the works with William Peterson and Jorja Fox set to reprise their roles; and new cast members will include Matt Lauria (Friday Night Lights), who will play Josh, a Level 3 CSI who excels at crime scene reconstruction; Paula Newsome (Chicago Med), who will play Maxine, the new head of the Vegas Crime lab; and Mel Rodriguez (Last Man on Earth), who will play Hugo, the head medical examiner who has a slightly creepy obsession with dead bodies. (TV Line)

The CW has announced their new projects, including the following:

• A straight-to-series order for a remake of The 4400 (a reboot of the USA Network drama). 4400 overlooked, undervalued, or otherwise marginalized people who vanished without a trace over the last hundred years are all returned in an instant, having not aged a day and with no memory of what happened to them. As the government races to analyze the potential threat and contain the story, the 4400 themselves must grapple with the fact that they’ve been returned with a few upgrades, and the increasing likelihood that they were all brought back now for a specific reason. This reboot has been in development at The CW since 2018;
• Naomi, based on the standalone comic book series, has been given a pilot order. The series follows a teen girl’s journey from her small northwestern town to the heights of the multiverse. When a supernatural event shakes her hometown to the core, Naomi sets out to uncover its origins, and what she discovers will challenge everything we believe about our heroes;
• Powerpuff Girls, a live-action series based on the Cartoon Network animated series, has also been given a pilot order. The new series sees the pint-sized superheroes as disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime fighting. Will they agree to reunite now that the world needs them more than ever?; and,
• An untitled religious dramedy about two millennial nuns – a devout true believer, and a new arrival who has yet to take her final vows – who start as strangers and become sisters on a funny, spiritual journey to understand their own faith and place in the Catholic church. (Variety)

YOU’VE BEEN FIRED

This news comes as no surprise for viewers of The Mandalorian on Disney+. Actress Gina Carano has been fired from the show due to problematic things and opinions she has shared/supported all across social media, ranging from anti-trans, anti-mask/anti-vaxxer and racist comments as well as being a supporter of the attempted January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, among other things. (TV Line)

SMALL SCREEN CASTING NEWS

Actress-singer Christina Milian has joined the cast of the small screen adaptation of Step Up – based on the box office dance franchise of films – which was picked up by Starz from its original airing on YouTube. She will take over the role of Collette that was played by the late Naya Rivera. (Variety)

Another Castle alum will appear in The Rookie. Actress Toks Olagundoye will appear in a multi-episode arc, playing Fiona Ryan, Officer John Nolans (lead star Nathan Fillion) professor in his Ethics and Criminal Justice class. (Digital Spy)

Versatile actor J.K. Simmons and actress Nina Arianda (Midnight in Paris and the TV series Goliath) are in talks to join the Amazon Studios Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez project Being the Ricardos that is set to star Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as the legendary couple. Simmons will play William Frawley, the actor who played Fred Mertz; and Arianda will play Vivian Vance, who played Ethel Mertz. (The Hollywood Reporter)

National Geographic has announced the next installment of its anthology series The Hot Zone. This time the scripted series will be The Hot Zone: Anthrax, which takes place in 2001, just weeks after 9/11, where another deadly act of terrorism rocked the United States. Letters containing anthrax were sent to unsuspecting victims in Florida, Washington, D.C. and New York. The anonymous assault claimed five lives and caused panic throughout the country. Despite interagency turf wars and many false leads, an unlikely team of scientists, FBI agents and government departments slowly closed in on a shocking prime suspect. The cast will include the following:

• Tony Goldwyn (Scandal) will play Bruce Ivins, a brilliant microbiologist who becomes embroiled in the hunt to find the 2001 anthrax killer;
• Daniel Dae Kim (Lost and Hawaii Five-0) will portray Matthew Ryker, an FBI agent with a specialty in microbiology, who, just three weeks after the 9/11attacks, risks his career to convince his superiors of the unthinkable, that the United States is under attack again;
• Harry Hamlin (L.A.Law) will play Tom Brokaw, the respected journalist and anchor for NBC News; and,
• Dylan Baker (The Good Wife) will play Ed Copak, a high-ranking FBI lifer. His department is rocked by the recent events of 9/11 and is now charged with finding the anthrax killer. He feels the weight of responsibility for getting justice for a wounded nation. (National Geographic)

HBO is working on a series adaptation of The Last of Us, based on the Sony Playstation franchise; and two cast members have been announced: Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones). The series takes place twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joe (Pascal), a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie (Ramsey) out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival. (Variety)

Actress Claire Danes (Homeland) will star in the lead role in the upcoming Apple drama series The Essex Serpent, which is based on the book by Sarah Perry. Danes takes over the lead role from Keira Knightley. The story follows newly widowed Cora (Danes) who, having been released from an abusive marriage, relocates from Victorian London to the small village of Aldwinter in Essex, intrigued by a local superstition that a mythical creature known as the Essex Serpent has returned to the area. (Variety)

Legendary Dolly Parton will reunite with her 9 to 5 co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, appearing in Grace and Frankie. (NY Post)

Actor Angus Macfadyen (from the box office movie Braveheart) will appear in the new drama Superman & Lois on the CW. He will take on the role of Jor-El, who will be a projection in the Fortress of Solitude, offering his son sage guidance. (ComicBook.com)

Actor Donald Glover (Community and Atlanta) and actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) will be putting a new spin on a small screen adaptation of the 2005 box office movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith – that starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Glover and Waller-Bridge will not only star in but also executive produce the series. (Variety)

BOX OFFICE CASTING NEWS

Veteran actress Jamie Lee Curtis will join Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart in the box office adaptation of the popular video game Borderlands. Curtis will play Tannis, based on the character Dr. Patricia Tannis, an archeologist on the planet of Pandora, whose expertise could help lead to a mysterious vault filled with ancient alien technology. She has a tricky background with Lilith, the character for which Blanchett will play. ALSO, actor Jack Black has joined the cast, providing the voice of Claptrap, a persistently sarcastic robot that isn’t all that invested in the survival of his teammates. (Variety)

Netflix has acquired the Dennis Quaid film Blue Miracle, based on a true story, that centers on Casa Hogar, a Mexican orphanage that was struggling to survive after Hurricane Odile hit in 2014. On the brink of bankruptcy, the residents enter the world’s biggest fishing tournament in hopes of winning the prize money to save their home. (Variety)

Actress Lily Gladstone, a descendant of the Blackfeet and Nez Perce tribes, will star in the upcoming Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon, which is based on the best-selling book by David Grann that takes place in 1920s Oklahoma, depicting a string of brutal murders of Osage Nation Native Americans, which came to be known as the Reign of Terror. The Osage Nation, who were the richest people per capita in the world, were killed one by one after oil was discovered on their land. As the death toll rose, the newly-created FBI took up the case and unraveled a chilling conspiracy and one of the most monstrous crimes in American history. Gladstone will play Mollie Burkhart, an Osage married to Ernest Burkhart, who is the nephew of a powerful local rancher. The movie cast will include Leonardo DiCaprio as Burkhart and Robert De Niro as Burkhart’s uncle. (Variety)

Actress Florence Pugh (Little Women and Black Widow) has signed on to play the lead in a sci-fi movie called Dolly, which will be about a robotic “companion doll” that kills her owner then asks for an attorney so she can plead not guilty. The movie is based on a short story by Elizabeth Bear. While the project has been picked up by Apple Studios it hasn’t been given an official green light yet. (Deadline and BBC America)

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Hey All,

Here are the news items for this past week:

EARLY RENEWALS

The CW got a late start with their new season for the 2020-2021 TV season, but the network has already given the following shows a renewal for the next TV season: The Flash (Season 8), Riverdale (Season 6), DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (Season 7), All American (Season 4), Charmed (Season 4), Legacies (Season 4), In the Dark (Season 4), Roswell, New Mexico (Season 4), Batwoman (Season 3), Nancy Drew (Season 3) and Dynasty (Season 5). (TV Line)

CANCELLATION

The cult favorite, supernatural Western series Wynonna Earp is coming to an end on Syfy. First, though, the final episodes of the current 4th season will get started on March 5 with the series finale set for April 9. (Deadline)

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

Paramount Plus (formerly CBS All Access) is setting up a prequel series to the Paramount Network’s Kevin Costner-led drama Yellowstone. Y: 1883 will follow the Dutton family as they embark on a journey west through the Great Plains toward the last bastion of untamed America. The series will be a stark retelling of Western expansion, and be an intense study of one family fleeing poverty to seek a better future in America’s promised land — Montana. The show is set to debut on the streaming service Paramount Plus sometime this year. (Variety)

Starz has ordered period drama series The Serpent Queen, which is based on the life of Catherine de Medici via the book “Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France. Considered an immigrant, common and plain, Catherine de Medici is married into the 16th century French court as an orphaned teenager expected to bring a fortune in dowry and produce many heirs, only to discover that her husband is in love with an older woman, her dowry is unpaid and she’s unable to conceive. Yet, only with her intelligence and determination, she manages to keep her marriage alive and masters the bloodsport that is the monarchy better than anyone else, ruling France for 50 years. The series will consist of 8 episodes. (Variety)

The All American spin-off to be titled All American: Homecoming will be moving forward, focusing on the character Simone Hicks (played by Geffri Maya). The series will be set against the backdrop of the historically Black college and university (HBCU) experience, following a young tennis hopeful from Beverly Hills (Maya) and an elite baseball player from Chicago as they contend with the high stakes of college sports, all while navigating the highs and lows of unsupervised early adulthood at a prestigious historically Black college. (TV Line)

Disney+ has a series set in Wakanda (the fictional African nation from which Black Panther is based) in development. (Variety)

SMALL SCREEN CASTING NEWS

Actress Lana Condor (the star of the Netflix movie franchise To All The Boys, based on the popular book franchise) is set to star in and executive produce the comedy series Boo, Bitch,” which has been ordered to series at Netflix. The comedy series will consist of 8 half-hour episodes that, over the course of one night, will follow a high school senior (Condor) who’s lived her life safely under the radar; but she seizes the opportunity to change her narrative to start living an epic life, only to find out the next morning that she’s a ghost. (Variety)

Actress Emily Hampshire (12 Monkeys and Schitt’s Creek) will executive producer AND star as the title character in an updated version of the Norman Lear 1970s syndicated hit Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. The show will be shopped around to buyers in the coming weeks. (Variety)

Actress Tamara Taylor (Bones) has landed a lead role in the upcoming NBC spin-off Law & Order: Organized Crime. Details on her character are being kept under wraps though. The latest spin-off will follow Christopher Meloni’s SVU character Elliot Stabler as he returns to the New York City police department following a devastating personal loss as he starts to put the pieces of his life back together, joining a high-level task force set on dismantling the city’s biggest crime syndicates. (TV Line)

Actress Neve Campbell (Party of Five and the recent box office movie Skyscraper) has landed a leading role in the Netflix small screen adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer, playing Maggie McPherson. She joins Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, who will star as Mickey Haller, who runs his law practice out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car. Maggie is Mickey’s first ex-wife, a passionately committed Deputy District Attorney known to colleagues as “Maggie McFierce” for her unwavering dedication to her job. (Variety)

Amazon has a new 7-part anthology series called Solos that will include a star-studded cast that will include Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, Helen Mirren, Uzo Aduba, Nicole Beharie, Anthony Mackie, Dan Stevens and Constance Wu. The series is described as exploring the deeper meaning of human connection, as explored through the lens of the individual. It will tell stories, each from a different perspective and moment in time, that illuminate that even during our most seemingly isolated moments, in the most disparate of circumstances, we are all connected through the human experience. The series is slated to debut sometime in 2021. (Variety)

Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) will star in the Paramount Plus (formerly CBS All Access) original series The Man Who Fell to Earth based on the novel by Walter Tevis made icon in the movie starring David Bowie. The series will follow a new alien character who arrives on Earth at a turning point in human evolution and must confront his own past to determine our future. (The Futon Critic)

Cast members have been added to the upcoming Netflix dramatic thriller Pieces of Her that already announced Belle Heathcote and Toni Collette in the lead roles. Actors Gil Birmingham (Yellowstone and Siren), Terry O’Quinn (Lost) and Calum Worthy (Austin & Ally and The Act) have recurring roles in the series set in a sleepy Georgia town where a random act of violence sets off an unexpected chain of events for 30-year-old Andy Oliver (Heathcote) and her mother Laura (Collette). Desperate for answers, Andy embarks on a dangerous journey across America, drawing her towards the dark, hidden heart of her family. Birmingham will play Charlie Bass, a protective family friend of Laura (Collette) and Andy Oliver (Heathcote) while O’Quinn will play Martin Queller, the charismatic, billionaire founder of pharmaceutical giant QuellCorp; and Worthy will play young Jasper, the eldest of the three Queller siblings. (Deadline)

BOX OFFICE CASTING NEWS

Actress Michelle Williams will portray entertainment icon Peggy Lee in the biopic called Fever. Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in 1920, who is best known for her sultry version of the song “Fever,” which was recorded in 1958. Lee began singing professionally at 16, recording her first number one hit “Somebody Else Is Taking My Place” at 22. Her career, which included an Oscar-nominated performance in the 1955 movie Pete Kelly’s Blues and several roles in the 1955 Disney animated feature “Lady and the Tramp” — spanned into the 1990s. (Variety)

Actress Emma Corrin (who plays Princess Diana on The Crown and was in the first season of Pennyworth) will star alongside British singer Harry Styles in the Amazon Studios romantic drama My Policeman based on the acclaimed novel by Bethan Roberts. The story takes place in the late 1990s, when the arrival of elderly invalid Patrick into Marion and Tom’s home, triggers the exploration of seismic events from 40 years previous: the passionate relationship between Tom and Patrick at a time when homosexuality was illegal. Styles and Corrin are set to star as Tom and Marion, respectively. (Deadline)

Actress Serinda Swan (Coroner and Graceland) will star as a young Elizabeth Taylor in the war movie Devotion that is set to star Jonathan Majors, Glen Powell, Christina Jackson, Joe Jonas and Thomas Sadoski. The aerial epic will chart the true story of U.S. Navy fighter pilots, Jesse Brown and Tom Hudner, two young men from different worlds. Initiated together into the VF-32 squadron, they are pushed to their limits flying a new design of fighter jet. But their friendship is tested when one of them is shot down behind enemy lines. Swan will play the iconic actress, who encounters the 32s during their shore leave in Cannes, France. (Deadline)

That’s it. Enjoy!

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