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!
