Hey All,
Here are the news items for this past week:
RENEWAL
Amazon has given Reacher a second season renewal. (TV Line)
IMDbTV has given the Christian Kane-led drama Almost Paradise a second season renewal. (Deadline)
The Disney Channel supernatural mystery series Secrets of Sulphur Springs has been renewed for a 3rd season. (Deadline)
The Spectrum Originals series Joe Pickett has been given a season two order. (Deadline)
CANCELLATION NEWS
Disney+ has pulled the plug on its planned Beauty and the Beast prequel series. The decision not to move forward with the series was made for creative reasons, as well as due to delays with the scripts and original music. (Deadline and TV Line)
DEVELOPMENT NEWS
Amazon is developing a live-action Blade Runner sequel series titled Blade Runner 2099. Plot details are, of course, being kept under wraps. (Variety)
FOX has given a script commitment to a series adaptation of the 2012 box office film End of Watch that would follow the daily grind of two young police officers in Los Angeles who are partners and friends, and what happens when they meet criminal forces greater than themselves. (Variety)
PILOT ORDER
CBS has ordered a pilot for a reboot of the network’s former series Early Edition that starred Kyle Chandler in the lead role. This new version would follow an ambitious but uncompromising journalist who starts receiving tomorrow’s newspaper today. She then finds herself in the complicated business of changing the news instead of reporting it. (Variety)
SPIN-OFF PLANS
ABC is jumping on the spin-off bandwagon with plans for spin-off for The Rookie that will star Claws lead Niecy Nash. The new show will be introduced in a two-episode backdoor pilot during the current 4th season of The Rookie. The potential new show would focus on the FBI with Nash starring as Simone Clark, the oldest rookie in the FBI Academy. (Variety)
TV CASTING NEWS
Marg Helgenberger will be back as Supervising Judge Lisa Benner on All Rise when the show makes its official move to OWN for its third season. Also Christian Keyes (The Boys and Legends of Tomorrow) will take over the role of Lola’s husband Robin (who was previously played by Todd Williams). (Deadline and TV Line)
Speaking of Marg Helgenberger: she will reprise her role of Catherine Willows on CSI: Vegas in the show’s second season. (TV Line)
Apple TV+ has landed the new period drama series The New Look about the meteoric rise of French fashion designer Christian Dior. Ben Mendelsohn (Bloodline) and Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) will star. The series is a World War II-era thriller that will open in Nazi-occupied Paris, when Coco Chanel’s (Binoche) reign as the world’s famous fashion designer ends and Christian Dior (Mendelsohn) rises thanks to his ground-breaking creations. (Variety)
Daniella Pineda (The Originals and Jurassic World franchise) has joined the cast of the upcoming AMC 6-episode anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead that will feature both new and established characters from The Walkind Dead universe. The cast already includes Terry Crews, Parker Posey and Anthony Edwards. The series is slated to debut this summer on AMC and AMC+. (Variety)
Anthony Ramos (the original Broadway cast of Hamilton and the box office movie In the Heights) has joined the cast of the upcoming Disney+ drama Ironheart that will star Dominique Thorne (If Beale Street Could Talk and Judas and the Black Messiah) as Riri Williams, a brilliant teenage inventor. What role Ramos will play is being kept under wraps. (The Hollywood Reporter)
HBO has picked up the series Doomsday Machine, adapted from the best-selling book by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang that chronicles the political and social minefields Facebook has navigated on its relentless quest for growth. The series examines how Sheryl Sandberg (who will be played by The Crown’s Claire Foy) and Mark Zuckerberg’s work are shaping the way that billions of people around the world communicate and consume information. (Variety)
The Disney+ small screen adaptation of National Treasure has added box office veteran Catherine Zeta-Jones to its cast. She will play Billie, a badass billionaire, black-market antiquities expert, and treasure hunter who lives by her own code. She transformed herself from a penniless orphan to a shrewd, stylish businesswoman and adventurer. (Variety)
Cast members have been added to season 2 of the HBO drama The White Lotus. Theo James (Sanditon and the upcoming Time Traveler’s Wife) and Meghann Fahy (The Bold Type) have joined the Sicily-set second season satire of wealth and privilege. (TV Line)
Christ McNalley (When Calls the Heart) has two recurring roles upcoming. The first is the Paramount+ drama Rise of the Pink Ladies that takes place in 1954, four years before the original Grease, before rock ‘n’ roll ruled and before the T-Birds were the coolest in the school. It follows four fed-up outcasts who dare to have fun on their own terms, sparking a moral panic that will change Rydell High forever. He will play Mr. Daniels, a young, cool teacher, so he’s well-liked by many, but he is actually a bad guy who threw a 16-year-old student under the bus for coming onto her, and tries to gaslight her into thinking he didn’t. The second is season 2 of Firefly Lane, starring Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke. He will play Mr. Waverly, a charismatic new English teacher who pushes Kate and Tully out of their comfort zones and inspires them to reach for new heights. (Deadline)
BOX OFFICE NEWS
Paramount has finally cast the lead role in their upcoming Bob Marley biopic. Kingsley Ben-Air (One Night in Miami) will play the reggae legend. (Variety)
Ugly Betty alum America Ferrera and Shang Chi star Simu Liu will both star opposite Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in the upcoming live action Barbie movie. Robbie will play Barbie and Gosling will play Ken. What roles Ferrera and Liu will play are being kept under wraps. (Variety)
The upcoming box office movie Ferrari about the ex-racecar drive and auto manufacturing giant Enzo Ferrari has announced its main cast. Adam Driver has taken over the lead role from Hugh Jackman while Penelope Cruz will play Enzo’s wife Laura and Shailene Woodley will play mistress Lina Lardi. (Variety)
Mayim Bialik will make her directorial debut in the upcoming movie As They Made Us, which will be a dysfunctional family dramedy also written by Bialik. The movie will follow Abigail (Diana Agron from Glee), a divorced mother of two, who is struggling to balance the dynamic forces within her dysfunctional family as she attempts to cultivate new love. The cast will include Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory), veteran actress Candice Bergen and film legend Dustin Hoffman. (Deadline)
Yara Shahidi (black-ish and grown-ish) will executive produce and star in the Amazon romantic comedy Sitting in Bars with Cake based on the blog and book by Audrey Shulman. Based on a true story, the movie will follow a quiet young woman who is unlucky in love and discovers an unlikely guy magnet when she bakes a cake for her best friend’s birthday and brings it to a bar, only to be swarmed by men. She believes it’s a fluke, but her friend convinces her to commit to a year of baking cakes and bringing them to bars, with the goal of finding true love. The shy young woman’s life subsequently opens up in ways she couldn’t have imagined. (Deadline)
Box office legend Morgan Freeman and Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games franchise) will star alongside each other in the upcoming time-bending sci-fi thriller film 57 Seconds that will follow a tech blogger (Hutcherson) who lands a career-defining interview with a visionary technology guru (Freeman). After thwarting an attack against the celebrated technophile, the blogger picks up a mysterious ring that allows its possessor to travel 57 seconds into the past. (Deadline)
That’s it. Enjoy!
