Hey All,
Here are the news items for this past week:
CANCELLATION NEWS
The CW superhero series Black Lightning will come to an end after its upcoming fourth, and now final, season, which will get started on February 8. The recently announced spin-off centered around Painkiller (to be played by Jordan Calloway) is still in development. (TV Line)
TV CASTING NEWS
Actress Keala Settle (The Greatest Showman) and actor Emery Kelly (Alexa & Katie) will recur in the upcoming Disney+ series Big Shot that stars John Stamos and Jessalyn Gilsig (Glee), which follows a temperamental college basketball coach (Stamos) who gets fired from his job and must take a teaching and coaching job at an elite all-girls private high school. Settle will play Christina Winters, while Kelly will play Dylan, a high school student who plays basketball on the public court with the girls team. (Deadline)
The second season of the Apple TV+ streaming series Truth Be Told has added to its cast. Among the additions are Merle Dandridge (Greenleaf), Jason O’Mara (The Man in the High Castle), Alona Tal (SEAL Team), Hale Appleman (The Magicians) and David Lyons (Revolution). They will star alongside Kate Hudson and Octavia Spencer. Season 2 will provide a glimpse into America’s obsession with true crime podcasts. (Deadline)
Actor Wentworth Miller (Prison Break) will reprise his role of Isaiah Holmes on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He is slated to appear in episodes set to air in 2021. (TV Line)
Actress Alfre Woodard (who just appeared in the Apple TV drama See) will shift from futuristic sci-fi to a drama more rooted in real history. She will star in and executive produce a limited series about civil rights and voting activist Fannie Lou Hamer for ABC Studios. (Woman and Hollywood)
The fourth season of the Netflix 80s-set series Stranger Things has added to its cast, including actors Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street) and Jamie Campbell Bower (the Twilight franchise). (TV Line)
MOVIE CASTING NEWS
Actress Glenn Close has joined the cast of the upcoming Apple Original film Swan Song that stars Oscar winner Mahershala Ali as well as Awkwafina and Naomie Harris. The film is a genre-bending drama set in the near future, which explores how far someone will go, and how much they’ll sacrifice, to make a happier life for the people they love. Close will play a head scientist at a facility. (Deadline)
Actress Cynthia Addai-Robinson (Power and Arrow) will star in the film Always and Forever, a psychological thriller that follows the lives of four childhood friends who experienced trauma long ago at a summer camp. Determined to get past it, the group moves on with their lives, barely talking about what happened. Though it seems like the past is buried, it comes back to haunt them when an unidentified stalker comes for all of them, one by one. The film also stars Loretta Devine. (Deadline)
Actress Cara Gee (The Expanse) and actor Mpho Koaho (Falling Skies) have joined the cast of the 2021 sci-fi thriller Levels. After witnessing the murder of his girlfriend (Gee), Joe (Koaho) risks everything — including reality itself — to discover the truth about her death. (Deadline)
Actor Russell Tovey (Being Human) [among others] has joined the cast of the upcoming rom-com tentatively called Text For You that stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas (Quantico), Sam Heughan (Outlander) and music icon Celine Dion. The film is about a woman, who, to ease the pain after tragically losing her fiancé, starts to send romantic texts to his old cell. It turns out the phone number has been reassigned to a man across town suffering from similar heartbreak. The two meet and feel an undeniable connection, but can’t seem to leave the past behind. (Deadline)
Actor Colin Hanks (Life in Pieces and Fargo), actress Diane Guerrero (Doom Patrol) and hip-hop star Nelly have joined the cast of the Buddy Holly biopic Clear Lake, which will star Ruairi O’Connor (The Spanish Princess) in the lead role. The movie will tell the story of how Holly and other famous musicians of the late 1950s gave birth to rock ‘n’ roll while changing the trajectory of civil rights in America. Hanks will play Norman Petty, Holly’s brilliant but often controlling manager and producer; Guerrero will play Holly’s wife, Maria Elena Holly; and Nelly will play Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Chuck Berry. (Variety)
Actresses Jennifer Garner and Zoe Saldana will star in the upcoming Netflix film The Adam Project that will star Ryan Reynolds as a pilot who uses rudimentary time travel technology to reunite with a younger version of himself in order to solve a mystery. (Variety)
Actor Zachary Levi (Chuck) will star in the inspirational family drama The Unbreakable Boy, playing the father of Austin, a boy with both a rare brittle-bone disease and autism. But what makes Austin truly unique is his joyous, funny, life-affirming worldview that transforms and unites everyone around him. Levi’s character changes his life as he comes to see Austin not as the symbol of something broken, but the triumph of an indestructible spirit. (Variety)
Actor Zachary Levi will then be the lead in the upcoming film American Underdog: The Kurt Warner Story, playing the NFL quarterback. (Variety)
That’s it. Enjoy!
