TAGGED AS: Apple TV+, Drama, television, TV
Better Call Saul alum Rhea Seehorn is reuniting with that series’ creator for an Apple TV+ project. Let the Right One In, Teen Wolf spin-off series Wolf Pack, and Criminal Minds: Evolution are among the series previewed during Showtime and Paramount+ Television Critics Association presentations. Plus, (updated) Rihanna confirms she will be next Super Bowl halftime headliner, new trailers, and more of the biggest news in TV and streaming this past week.
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Well, that didn’t take long: A little more than a month after the series finale of Better Call Saul, that series’ co-creator, Vince Gilligan, and Emmy-nominated lead actress, Rhea Seehorn, are reuniting for another drama series. The still-untitled show, described as a “blended genre drama,” as first reported by Deadline.com, has been given a two-season, straight-to-series order by Apple TV+ and will feature Seehorn as its lead.
“I am OVER THE MOON excited about this!!!! Words cannot express. My heart is exploding!” tweeted Seehorn, who earned a Best Supporting Actress Emmy nomination for her Better Call Saul role.
I am OVER THE MOON excited about this!!!!
Words cannot express.
My heart is exploding! https://t.co/rnqGSO1AvU— Rhea Seehorn (@rheaseehorn) September 22, 2022
Said Gilligan in a statement, “After 15 years, I figured it was time to take a break from writing antiheroes … and who’s more heroic than the brilliant Rhea Seehorn? It’s long past time she had her own show, and I feel lucky to get to work on it with her. And what nice symmetry to be reunited with Zack Van Amburg, Jamie Erlicht, and Chris Parnell! Jamie and Zack were the first two people to say yes to Breaking Bad all those years ago. They’ve built a great team at Apple, and my wonderful, long-time partners at Sony Pictures Television and I are excited to be in business with them.”
Erlicht and Van Amburg sold both Breaking Bad and its spin-off/prequel Saul, while Chris Parnell (the executive, not the actor) is the former Sony Pictures Television co-President who is now a senior programming executive for Apple TV+.
Neither Gilligan nor Seehorn have shared plot or character details about the upcoming series, which was a hot project that also had interest from Amazon and Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul’s home network, AMC. The show is being compared to The Twilight Zone, which Gilligan has often cited as one of his favorite series, and will not be set in the drugs and crime worlds of his previous hits, Deadline reports.
“Thought-provoking, but not a morality tale, the series also is expected to carry the signature Gilligan tone that infuses drama with humor,” Deadline wrote.
More trailers and teasers released this week:
• BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is an epic, visually stunning and immersive experience set against the intimate and moving journey of Silverio, a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles, who, after being named the recipient of a prestigious international award, is compelled to return to his native country, unaware that this simple trip will push him to an existential limit. Stars Mexican actor Daniel Giménez Cachoby, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Premieres Dec. 16. (Netflix)
• Conversations With A Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes is the third entry in the series from director Joe Berlinger (CWAK: The Ted Bundy Tapes, CWAK: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes), a three-part documentary featuring never-before-heard audio interviews between Dahmer and his defense team, delving into his warped psyche while answering open questions of police, accountability through a modern-day lens. Featuring fresh interviews with investigative journalists, prosecutors, psychologists, and victims’ friends and families, the series shines new light on the intersection of race, class, sexuality, and policing that gave rise to one of the most notorious murderers of the 20th century. Premieres Oct. 7. (Netflix)
• The Midnight Club – at a hospice with a mysterious history, the eight members of the Midnight Club meet each night at midnight to tell sinister stories, and to look for signs of the supernatural from the beyond. A new horror series from Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy’s Intrepid Pictures (The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass), and Leah Fong is based on the creative work of bestselling author Christopher Pike. Stars Iman Benson, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, Annarah Cymone, Chris Sumpter, Adia, Aya Furukawa, Sauriyan Sapkota, Matt Biedel, Samantha Sloyan, with Zach Gilford, and Heather Langenkamp. Premieres Oct. 7. (Netflix)
• Sonic Prime will find the blue blur videogame star battling rival Shadow and the evil Eggman, among many other streaming adventures. The 24- episode family series is set to premiere in winter 2022. (Netflix)
• Documentary Now! Season 4 includes guest stars like Nicholas Braun, Cate Blanchett, and Alexander Skarsgård, while Werner Herzog’s Burden of Dreams and My Octopus Teacher, and When We Were Kings are among the films parodied. Oscar winner Helen Mirren returns as host for Season 53 documentary parody series. Premieres Oct. 19. (IFC)
• The Devil’s Hour is a thriller in which Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi plays a murder-obsessed character who claims he’s a time traveller and a fortune teller. Premieres Oct. 28 (Amazon Prime)
• Grey’s Anatomy is up to an impressed Season 19, and though she won’t be around full time this season, Ellen Pompeo’s Meredith will reunite – for now, at least – with her hunky boyfriend Nick (Scott Speedman). Premieres Oct. 6. (ABC)
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When They See Us Emmy winner Jharrel Jerome will star with Zazie Beetz, Claire Danes, Timothy Olyphant, and Dennis Quaid in Full Circle, the HBO Max limited series from director Steven Soderbergh and writer Ed Solomon. The six-episode series is a drama about an investigation of a kidnapping gone wrong that reveals many secrets and connects several characters and cultures. (Deadline)
The 100 star Richard Harmon has joined The Flash at CW, where he’ll play Owen Mercer, a.k.a. Captain Boomerang in the series’ upcoming ninth season. Captain Boomerang, who has been released from Iron Heights, will be a dangerous and violent threat as he comes to town with a chip on his shoulder. (Deadline)
Bridgerton alum Regé-Jean Page and Tom Gun: Maverick star Glen Powell are going to star in and executive produce Butch and Sundance, an Amazon TV series, while The Russo Brothers will also EP the series, and Kaz and Ryan Firpo (The Eternals) will write the script for the revamp of the classic Robert Redford–Paul Newman Western. (The Wrap)
Martin Short and Shania Twain are in talks to star in ABC’s Beauty and the Beast special, with Short to play Lumière and country music star Twain to play Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration. Previously announced cast includes David Alan Grier as Cogsworth, H.E.R. as Belle, Josh Groban as Beast, Joshua Henry as Gaston, and EGOT winner Rita Moreno as the live-action/animated special’s narrator. (Variety)
Chris Diamantopoulos, Ashley Romans, and Katja Herbers have joined the Peacock drama Mrs. Davis from Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez. Details of the series are hush hush, but Deadline reports the drama is “an exploration of faith versus technology, an epic battle of biblical and binary proportions.” (Deadline)
New cast members for the upcoming Yellowstone prequel 1923: Game of Thrones alum Jerome Flynn, who will play Banner Creighton, the “leader of the local sheep men,” and Robert Patrick, who will play Sheriff William McDowell, a Dutton family friend. (Deadline)
(Photo by Nicholas Galitzine)
Nicholas Galitzine will star in Amazon’s The Idea of You with Oscar winner Anne Hathaway. The movie, based on Robinne Lee’s bestselling contemporary love story book of the same name, centers on Sophie (Hathaway), a 40-year-old divorced mother. Sophie’s husband left her for a younger woman, and now he has canceled his Coachella trip with their 15-year-old daughter. Sophie picks up the pieces and braves the crowds and desert heat. There, she meets 24-year-old Hayes Campbell (Galitzine), the lead singer of the hottest boy band on the planet, August Moon.
Sarah Paulson will star in and executive produce the HBO Max scripted adaptation of the docuseries The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin, about the late Weigh Down Workshop and Christian-based diet program founder was accused of exploiting followers of her Remnant Fellowship Church. (Deadline)
Saturday Night Live news: Chris Redd is the latest cast member to depart, while the upcoming season 48 will start off with hosts Miles Teller and musical guest Kendrick Lamar (Oct. 1), Brandon Gleeson with musical guest Willow (Oct. 8), and host and musical guest Megan Thee Stallion (Oct. 15).
Eugene Cordero, who plays Time Variance Authority employee Casey, has been promoted to series regular for the second season of Disney+’s Loki. (Deadline)
Russian Doll actor Charlie Barnett is in talks to star in The Acolyte, the upcoming Star Wars series set during the final days of the High Republic. The signing would reunite Barnett with The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland, who is also the co-creator of Russian Doll. (THR)
The Rookie: Feds has cast star Niecy Nash-Betts’s wife, Jessica Betts, as a guest star on the series. Betts will play a love interest for Nash-Betts’ character Simone Clark on the ABC series. (TVLine)
Bradley Whitford has signed on for a recurring role in the AMC series Parish (formerly known as The Driver). Parish follows Giancarlo Esposito’s Gray Parish, a taxi driver whose life is turned upside down when he agrees to chauffer a New Orleans–based Zimbabwean gangster notorious for exploiting undocumented immigrants at the U.S. southern ports. Whitford plays Anton, the charming and intelligent face of industrial business in Louisiana who covertly heads a criminal organization. His dispute with a Zimbabwean human trafficking ring puts him at direct odds with Parish.
Donal Logue and Gloria Reuben have joined the season 3 cast of The Equalizer at CBS, the Queen Latifah drama that premieres its new season on Oct. 2. Logue will play Colton Fisk, once one of the CIA’s most decorated agents, who helped take out Bin Laden. Reuben will play Trish, a recent widow who is rekindling a romance with her ex-girlfriend, Vi (Lorraine Toussaint). (Deadline)
Bullet Train star Logan Lerman will star in Hulu’s We Were the Lucky Ones, the limited series based on author Georgia Hunter’s bestselling book about a Jewish family separated but determined to survive in the beginning of World War II. Lerman’s Bullet Train co-star Joey King, will also star in We Were the Lucky Ones. (Deadline)
Good Girls star Retta To Star will star in the NBC pilot Murder by the Book, with series creator/EP/co-showrunner Jenna Bans and EP/co-showrunner Bill Krebs, who she also worked with on Good Girls. The drama follows “big-city Instafamous book reviewer (Retta) who takes a page out of the murder mystery books she reviews and becomes an unlikely detective to uncover the shocking truths about an eccentric seaside town.” (Deadline)
Lily Collins will star in Razzlekhan: The Infamous Crocodile of Wall Street, a true-crime limited series at Hulu about crypto couple Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan, based on a New York magazine article, which details the couple’s roles as either the masterminds of one of the largest heists in history or a pair of hapless wannabe entrepreneurs. Collins will play Morgan and produce the project. (Deadline)
Molly Ringwald has joined the cast of Ryan Murphy’s FX series Feud: Capote’s Women, in which she’ll play Johnny Carson’s second wife Joanne, a longtime friend of author Truman Capote. The limited series, which will be directed by Gus Van Zant, unfolds the story of Capote’s friendships with New York’s most prominent society women, who he alienated by writing a story that was also a thinly-veiled telling of their personal secrets. It ended the friendships and changed the rest of the trajectory of his life. Previously announced stars include Tom Hollander, Naomi Watts, Calista Flockhart, Diane Lane, and Chloë Sevigny. (Deadline)
Nicole Byer, Harvey Guillén, Jessica Lowe, and Andrew Lewis Caldwell will star in Cursed Friends, an original supernatural Comedy Central movie from producer Will Arnett, who will also make an appearance in the movie, which also stars Joey Fatone, Kathy Griffin, Nicole Richie, Ken Marino, Rob Riggle, and Nikki Glaser. (Deadline)
Judge Reinhold, Paul Reiser, John Ashton, and Bronson Pinchot have joined the cast for Eddie Murphy’s sequel movie Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley at Netflix.
Parker Posey and Wagner Moura have signed on to the cast of Amazon’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith series, joining leads Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, as well as Michaela Coel, John Turturro, and Paul Dano. (Variety)
Lori Loughlin has gotten her first movie role since her prison stint in 2020: she’ll star in the Great American Family movie Fall Into Winter. She’ll play a woman who’s shocked when her brother sells his half of the family candy shop to her enemy.
Original High School Musical stars Corbin Bleu, Monique Coleman, Lucas Grabeel, Bart Johnson, Alyson Reed, and Kaycee Stroh will join Season 4 of Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, which is currently in production in Salt Lake City. Kylie Cantrall (Gabby Duran & The Unsittables), Matthew Sato (Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.), Caitlin Reilly (Hacks), and Vasthy Mompoint (The Prom) also join the season in recurring guest star roles.
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UPDATED: Despite rumors last week that Taylor Swift would be the performer for the Super Bowl halftime next year — for new halftime sponsor Apple, taking over for Pepsi — multiple Grammy winner Rihanna confirmed the news herself that she will be the halftime show star for Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona on Fox Feb. 12.
Don Cheadle’s production company, This Radicle Act, has optioned Hannah Rose May’s Image Comics comic book Rogues’ Gallery, with the intention of adapting the book into a TV series. The story revolves around Maisie Wade, who has just quit her role as the Red Rogue, in a massively popular comic book series, but when her exit leads the TV show to be cancelled, Maisie is trapped inside her own house by group of the show’s fans, dressed up as the series’ villains, who want revenge against the actress. She soon decides the only way she can survive is to become her superhero character. (Deadline)
50 Cent has decided not to renew his long-term deal with Starz, and now the Power franchise executive producer is looking for a new home for his G-Unit Film & Television, which includes a line-up of more than two dozen series in production and other projects in development.
Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge and Silicon Valley star Zach Woods will create and executive produce the straight-to-series order of Peacock’s first adult animated comedy In the Know. Greg Daniels will also executive produce, while Judge and Woods will also star in the series, about Lauren Caspian, NPR’s third most popular host. He’s a well-meaning, hypocritical nimrod. He’s also a stop-motion puppet. Each episode follows the making of an episode of Lauren’s show In the Know, in which Lauren conducts in-depth interviews with real-world human guests. Lauren collaborates with a diverse crew of NPR staff, who are also puppets and nimrods.
Chloé Zhao signs a multi-year, first-look deal with Searchlight Television. The Oscar– and Golden Globe–winning Nomadland filmmaker, also known for her work on Eternals, Songs My Brother Taught Me, and The Rider, is Zhao’s first foray into the television landscape, and Searchlight is looking to her as a star of their new TV division.
In a one-year deal, the Golden Globe awards return to NBC, airing live coast-to-coast from the Beverly Hilton on Jan. 10, 2023.
HBO is in production on a follow-up episode to the documentary series The Case Against Adnan Syed, from Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg, featuring exclusive access to Syed leading up to and following his release from prison. The new episode, directed by Berg, will debut in 2023. Berg has been filming the follow-up episode in Maryland since early 2021. Most recently, Berg was in the courthouse when Baltimore City Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn approved the motion to vacate Syed’s murder conviction. The investigation from the original series was referenced as evidence in the hearing. The Case Against Adnan Syed explored the 1999 disappearance and murder of 18-year-old Baltimore County high school student Hae Min Lee, and the subsequent conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, in a case brought to global attention by the hugely popular Serial podcast. The series premiered in March 2019 and is currently available on HBO Max. “We knew the end of The Case Against Adnan Syed was not the end of this story, and we’ve been closely following every twist and turn in the case since the series premiered in March 2019,” Berg said. “It’s gratifying to see many of the questions and issues probed in the original episodes come to bear on the events of this week.”
David Cronenberg’s horror film cult classic Scanners is heading to HBO as a series, with Black Mirror Emmy-winning writer William Bridges writing and serving as showrunner and Lovecraft Country pilot director Yann Demange directing. Bridges and Demange will both serve as executive producers, along with Cronenberg. The series will focus on two women who live on the fringes of society and are being pursued by powerful agents. They have to work together to stop the agents and thwart a vast conspiracy. (THR)
Everyone’s favorite soccer players and coaches from Emmy-winning Ted Lasso, including Jason Sudeikis’ titular head coach, Brendan Hunt’s Coach Beard, Brett Goldstein’s Roy Kent, Phil Dunster’s Jamie Tartt, Toheeb Jimoh’s Sam Obisanya, and Cristo Fernandez’s Dani Rojas will be featured as playable characters in EA Sports’ FIFA 23 game AFC Richmond team. The game is available on Sept. 30.
“The movie is, for me, one of the best horror movies ever made and probably the most moving,” Hinderaker told journalists during the show’s all-virtual Television Critics Assoc. panel on September 20.
He adds that “that’s how I always begin; with an emotional connection.” Hinderaker says he sought to build out the original story of an older man who gathers food for a child vampire into one of a father (Demián Bichir’s Mark) and his dedication to saving his daughter (Madison Taylor Baez’s Eleanor). For a decade, they have been searching the world for a cure for her particular, um, affliction.
“I was really interested in exploring addiction and exploring what a parent will do for a child when they are struggling with addiction,” Hinderaker says. (The addictive substance, in this case, being blood).
The series also has another, more fractured, father-daughter relationship: the one between Željko Ivanek’s dying pharmaceutical giant and Claire, his scientist daughter, played by Grace Gummer. And one between a mother and son: Anika Noni Rose’s police detective Naomi; a single mother struggling with how to parent her bullied son, Ian Foreman’s Isiah.
“I feel like that’s the great main; very complicated theme of this show,” Gummer told journalists. “Where is everybody’s moral center? Where does it lie?.”
She adds that “this show is sort of toting a line between what’s good and evil and who is doing the right thing and who is doing the wrong thing. I think it’s in the gray zone where everyone lies and for what reasons.”
There’s also the matter of determining what these vampires can and cannot do (besides, of course, not being able to enter a new home until they’re let in).
Hinderaker says he was inspired by a line in John Ajvide Lindqvist’s book that he says “refers to being a vampire as an infection” and that the idea of being infected is repeated throughout director Tomas Alfredson’s movie. So he met with a virologist about what vampirism would look like as it infected a person. From learning that the part of the brain that manages pigmentation from UV rays is also the same one that manages our fight-of-flight reflexes, he was able to develop the “rules” of the show.
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Let the Right One In: Season 1
(2022)
premieres October 7 on Showtime’s digital channels and at 10 p.m., October 9 on Showtime.
More from Showtime’s TCA day:
• The second season of the Bryan Cranston drama Your Honor will premiere on December 9 on Showtime’s digital channels and at 9 p.m. on December 11 on Showtime. Cranston told journalists that the theme for the new season is “redemption” and whether “there a place for that in this world.” In addition to guest star Rosie Perez, the season will welcome back season one actors Margo Martindale and Amy Landecker as guest stars.
• The second season of late-night variety series Ziwe will premiere at 11 p.m. on November 20. Guests this season include Michael Che, Julia Fox, Amber Riley, Blake Griffin, Joel Kim Booster, Bob The Drag Queen, DeRay Mckesson, Drew Barrymore and Wayne Brady.
(Photo by courtesy of Paramount+/Danielle Kosann)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar returns to the horror genre with Paramount+’s upcoming series, Wolf Pack. She’ll play Kristin Ramsey, the chief arson investigator of a California wildfire that awakens a supernatural creature and upends the lives of teens Everett (Armani Jackson) and Blake (Bella Shepard).
Although Gellar says that “I’ve been pitched once, twice, 2000 of these types of shows” and that she was prepared to say no to this project as well, she was taken by its frank talk of real-life issues.
She says that, during her meeting with creator Jeff Davis, “we discussed the issues he wanted to tackle; mainly anxiety and depression among children [and] specifically having to do with their use of devices and the lack of connectivity. It’s something that I think about all the time, and it’s so prominent.”
Although it’s a spin-off of the 2011 MTV series Teen Wolf and based on the book series by Edo Van Belkom, creator Davis told journalists during the show’s September 21 TCA panel that this series is “a very different tone than we did on Teen Wolf.” One way in particular? He says moving to a streaming platform meant that the sex scenes could be more intimate, which includes those involving Tyler Lawrence Gray’s character, Harlan Briggs, who is openly queer.
More news from Paramount+’s TCA day:
• Criminal Minds: Evolution will premiere its first two episodes on November 24 with original series cast members Joe Mantegna, Aisha Tyler, AJ Cook, Kirsten Vangsness, and Paget Brewster back on the case. New cast member Zach Gilford will play an “unsub” (or unidentified subject of the investigation) who is rumored to have been quite busy during the pandemic and the new show will have — appropriately — a serialized structure. Showrunner Erica Messer told journalists that no one involved with the first iteration of the show wanted the last season to be the end and that moving the series to streaming means more swearing, but that the depiction of the cases won’t get more graphic; that she “never wanted us to go into full rated-R, extra violence.”
• Director Todd Holland says the message of the kid-friendly musical, Monster High: The Movie is to “be a monster. be yourself. be unique.” The film, which is based on the popular TV series and dolls, will premiere October 6 on Paramount+ and Nickelodeon.
• In Tulsa King, the Paramount+ drama created by Yellowstone’s Taylor Sheridan with Terence Winter serving as showrunner, Sylvester Stallone plays a mobster just released from a 25-year sentence who takes up residence in Tulsa, Oklahoma. When asked if he’d ever met any actual gangsters, Sly deadpanned to journalists that “half of my family are gangsters.” Tulsa King premieres November 13 on Paramount+.
