The Weekly Round-Up for August 23 to 27

Here are the entertainment news items for this past week:

NEWS

Congratulations are in order for the winners of the Creative Arts Emmys that were presented this last weekend, including John Lithgow, Ann-Margret, Betty White, Neil Patrick Harris,Anne Hathaway, Robot Chicken, Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie and The Old Spice Body Wash commercial.

TELEVISION NEWS

The CW will be giving viewers a second chance to see the networks new dramas Hellcats and Nikita. Hellcats will debut on September 8 with Nikita premiering on September 9. Then the shows will be rebroadcast on September 10 (back to back). The network will do the same thing for both show’s second episodes, airing rebroadcasts on September 17. Don’t worry Smallville and Supernatural fans; both shows return on September 24.

AMC will launch their newest drama The Walking Dead with a 90-minute premiere on Halloween night (October 31), starting at 10 PM. The series is based on the comic book written by Robert Kirkman and published by Image Comics. The six-episode series tells the story of life following a zombie apocalypse. It follows a group of survivors, led by police officer Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln (Love Actually), traveling in search of a safe and secure home. Jon Bernthal (The Pacific and Eastwick) plays Rick’s sheriff’s department partner before the apocalypse, Shane Walsh, and Sarah Wayne Callies (Prison Break), is Rick’s wife, Lori. Supporting cast include Laurie Holden (The Shield), Jeffrey DeMunn, Chandler Riggs and Steven Yeun. Also, Lennie James (Jericho and Hung) will be featured in the pilot. Subsequent episodes will be one-hour long presentations.

Christine Lahti will be back on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, reappearing as overbearing ADA Sonya Paxton sent by the DA’s office to ride herd on the SVU team.

KateeSackhoff will be returning to The Big Bang Theory this fall, where she will reprise her role as “KateeSackhoff,” the conscience of Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), in an episode that will also guest star Melissa Rauch’s Bernadette. Sackhoff is slated to appear in the September 23rd episode.

Tia Carrere will return to Warehouse 13 on August 31, reprising her role as Katie Logan, a Secret Service agent who has a history with Pete (Eddie McClintock). She returns because a close colleague is murdered in a plot of revenge against Artie (Saul Rubinek).

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

The new Syfy pilot Three Inches has announced their cast, which boasts James Marsters (Smallville, Caprica and Buffy), Andrea Martin (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), Naoko Mori (Torchwood) and Stephanie Jacobsen (Melrose Place and BattlestarGalactica: Razor) as well as Noah Reid (Strange Days at Blake Holsey High). Antony Del Rio (The Super Hero Squad Show), Kyle Schmid (Blood Ties) and Brandon Jay McLaren (TRON: Legacy, Harper’s Island). The pilot will be 90-minutes long and will feature Alona Tal (Veronica Mars), Craig Eldridge (Covert Affairs) and Julian Richings (Supernatural) as guest stars in the pilot episode. The series is about professional daydreamer and underachiever, Walter Spackman (Reid) who is struck by lightning, and develops a unique “super” power — the ability to move any object using just his mind… but only a distance of three inches. He’s soon recruited by a covert team of superheroes each gifted with their own extraordinarily ordinary abilities. Together, the unlikely band of heroes proves that “super” is simply a state of mind. The actors’ parts are as follows: James Marsters will star as Troy Hamilton, a former government agent who takes Walter in to his own team of “super” heroes who fight evil wherever they find it. He is a father figure to Walter. Andrea Martin will play Belinda Spackman, Walter’s mother, a brutally honest, comically cynical force of nature that loves her son more than words can say and will do anything to protect him. Stephanie Jacobsen plays Watts, a beautiful “super” hero who has the ability to shape the emotions of anyone she meets at close range. Antony Del Rio will portray The Human Smell, an adventurous, often irritating teenager who is able to emit a pungent gas through his pores that disables anyone nearby. Naoko Mori plays Annika, a woman who can duplicate and broadcast any sound she hears. Kyle Schmid will play Brandon, the “super” hero team leader with all the cockiness and strength of a true action hero, minus the superpowers. He is the opposite of Walter and sees most of the team as freaks. Brandon Jay McLaren plays Macklin Sportello, Walter’s best friend, a big talker with not a lot to back it up. His relationship is tested when Walter begins to change, but he’s the friend that will always be there for him. As for the guest stars for the pilot episode, their parts are as follows: Alona Tal will guest star in the pilot as Lily Theroux, the kind, pretty girl next door and Walter’s long time crush who loves him but “not in that way.” Craig Eldridge will guest as Todd, part of Troy’s team of “super” heroes who can see two minutes into the future at the cost of a massive disabling headache. Julian Richings will also appear as a guest star playing Ethan, a man with the ability to communicate with and control the insect kingdom.

FOX is developing an untitled drama pilot with writer Rick Eid and executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci about a prosecutor who discovers that he can tell whether a defendant is guilty or innocent. “Show revolves around an overly ambitious prosecutor who wrongfully convicts an innocent man for murder, an event that becomes the trigger for his magical flashes and an understanding that he has a debt an understanding that he has a debt to repay to the innocent,” writes Variety’s Cynthia Littleton.

Meghan Markle (Fringe) has landed the female lead role on the USA Network pilot A Legal Mind, playing Rachel Lane, an attractive paralegal with an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. Patrick Adams (Weather Girl) plays Mike Ross, a brilliant yet slacking college student impersonating a high-powered Manhattan corporate attorney. Gabriel Macht (The Spirit) also stars in the show as the firm’s recruiter who brings him on board. Additionally, Gina Torres (Huge and Firefly) was cast in second position as Katherine Pearson, a senior partner at the law firm.

Looks like Jamie-Lynn Sigler (The Sopranos) has been tapped to star opposite Sherry Stringfield (ER) in the new as-yet untitled Josh Berman pilot for Lifetime. The series is a closed-ended drama set in San Diego, centering on police detective Molly Collins (Stringfield), married mother of two on the verge of divorce, who, along with her partner Brooke Kross (Sigler), investigate the city’s most high-profile crimes while navigating their divergent personal lives. This series is one of 3 new pilots ordered by the network in June.

Meanwhile, John Hawkes (Deadwood and Lost) is set to star in the FX drama pilot Outlaw Country, which is a crime thriller/family drama set against the backdrop of southern organized crime and Nashville royalty. It focuses on 4 main characters, played by Luke Grimes (Brothers & Sisters), Haley Bennett (Marley & Me), Mary Steenburgen and Hawkes. Grimes playstwentysomething Eli Larkin, a half-cowboy, half-modern guy who tries to get out of the crime ridden life he has grown accustom. Bennett plays twentysomething Annabel Lee, a gorgeous country singer who is living in the shadow of her overprotective mother (Steenburgen). Hawkes plays Tarzen Larkin, Eli’s uncle and one of the most charismatic and compelling characters in Slaughter, a big-time player in the Southern crime world.

ABC has ordered the as-yet untitled new pilot, from Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (the people behind The O.C., Gossip Girl and Chuck), about a group of twenty-something roommates who juggle their personal and professional lives in Washington. The young politicos find that the ideals that brought them to D.C. don’t always match with the realities of living in the nation’s capital.

MADE FOR TV MOVIE NEWS

Andrea Bowen (Desperate Housewives) will star as a driven equestrian who suffers a near fatal injury during a horse show in the Hallmark Channel movie After the Fall set to premiere on October 9 at 8 PM. The movie co-stars Greg Evigan, Gail O’Grady, Rick Malambri (Step Up 3-D) and Fiona Dourif (Deadwood).

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah are to star in the upcoming box office movie Joyful Noise, which centers around two women who join forces to prevent a small-town gospel choir from shutting down. Latifah will play the mother of two teens who is put in charge of the Pacashau Gospel Choir after the death of its choir director. Parton will appear as the choir director’s widow who hopes to take over her late husband’s job.

Carey Mulligan (An Education) will be joining Ryan Gosling and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) in the action movie Drive, which is an adaptation of the novel by James Sallis that follows a nameless Hollywood stuntman (Gosling) who moonlights as a freelance getaway driver during robberies. When a bank heist goes wrong, he ends up on the run with a contract on his head and an ex-con’s girlfriend (Mulligan) sitting in the passenger’s seat along for the ride.

A script by Ahmet Zappa and Michael Wislon called Monster Witness Relocation Program, based on an original idea by Zappa, is being made into a movie. The book follows a brother and sister who discover they hail from a long line of monster hunters, who must learn the family business quickly when their father is kidnapped and they take on the most diabolical creature in the universe.

Paul Rudd, Topher Grace and Kristen Wiig are being recruited for the independent film Bobby Blue Sky, which focuses on three dysfunctional siblings dealing with their baby brother’s accidental fame (as a character in their father’s children’s book series) warping their lives.

Jessica Alba will be taking on a parental role in the film sequel Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World. The fourth installment of the franchise will see Alba as a retired spy who has been reactivated and mother of a baby and two preteen stepchildren who will step up to be the new Spy Kids. Although this is technically a reboot, apparently franchise star Antonio Banderas and original kids Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara (all grown up) are expected to get supporting roles.

Channing Tatum will star in and co-produce the ensemble drama movie Ten Year, which follows a group of friends reunited a decade after their graduation. Jenna Dewan (Tatum’s wife), Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, Chris Pine and Scott Porter are among those being sought for other roles in the film, but no deals are yet locked.

Jeremy Renner has been cat opposite Tom Cruise in the upcoming Mission: Impossible IV. Paramount has stated the following: “[We] have struggled to find the right co-star to play an operative opposite Cruise, and one factor was selecting an actor who could potentially carry the series down the line, should Cruise’s Ethan Hunt character not continue. A scheduled release date for Mission: Impossible IV is December 2011.

Harold Perrineau (Lost), Diora Baird (My Best Friend’s Girl), Elisabeth Rohm (Heroes), Jim Caviezel (The Passion of Christ) and James Frain (True Blood and The Tudors) have all joined the cast of the thriller Transit, which follows a band of thieves on the run from a bank robbery and the suburban family they come across during their escape. When the criminals stash their stolen money in the family’s SUV at a rest stop, the road trippers unwittingly draw the murderous band of outlaws on their trail. Caviezel will play the protective father and Rohm will be the mother of the traveling family heading out on a camping trip. Perrineau and Baird are members of the bank robbery crew. There is no word on Frain’s role yet.

Taylor Schilling (Mercy) will star opposite ZacEfron in the screen adaptation of The Lucky One based on the Nicholas Sparks romance novel. The story follows a young Marine who, upon completing three tours in Iraq, returns home to North Carolina attributing his survival to a photo of a mysterious girl, who he then sets out to find. When he finally meets her, the two begin to develop feelings for each other.

Looks like Sam Worthington is heading to his hometown of Perth, Australia to star as the lead in the surfing drama Drift, which is an inspired-by-facts story that follows how surfing evolved from a pastime to a global industry. Worthington will play a photographer and journalist instrumental in that revolution.

Andie MacDowell has signed on to play the wife of Dennis Quaid in the upcoming Footloose remake. The acting vets should be a welcome addition to a cast that boasts relative newbies Kenny Wormald (Center Stage: Turn it Up) and Julianne Hough (Dancing with the Stars) as the teen leads. The movie should be on the big screen next April.

Looks like Al Pacino and Katie Holmes will be joining Adam Sandler in the upcoming romantic comedy Jack and Jill, a story about Jack, a family man who deals with his twin sister Jill visiting for Thanksgiving. Sandler will be playing both of the siblings.

Anna Paquin (True Blood) and Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) have joined the cast of Scream 4, but no confirmation has been made as to what roles they will play. The film stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, as well as Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, and Adam Brody.

Malcolm McDowell, Marilu Henner and Zak Orth have joined the cast of the vampire romance drama Vamps, which is a contemporary story following two beautiful young vampires (Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter) who enjoy the New York City nightlife until romance jeopardizes their immortality. McDowell plays Vlad the Impaler, now living in NYC as the velvet jogging suit-wearing Vlad Tepish. Henner will play a dying woman who gets the chance to resurrect her once-sexy self while Orth will appear as a nerdy friend to the two female characters. Sigourney Weaver, Kristen Johnston, Richard Lewis, Wallace Shawn and Justin Kirk also star.

Stephen Dorff (Public Enemies) is in negotiations to star opposite Maria Bello (The History of Violence) in the indie thriller Carjacked. The story follows a single mother and her child who are carjacked by a thief who has no intention of letting them go.

CASTING SCOOP

Jennifer Morrison (House) will make a guest appearance on the 6th episode of the new NBC drama Chase,playing Faith, a single mother-turned-fugitive who embarks on a bloody killing spree across Texas with her innocent little daughter in tow. Chase premieres September 20 at 10 PM.

Tia Texada (Third Watch and Huge) will guest star in the 4th episode of Chuck, starring as the exotic wife of Premier Alejandro Goya (Armand Assante).

Jennifer Aniston will reunite with Courteney Cox as a guest star on the season premiere of Cougar Town on September 22 at 9:30 PM.

Judd Hirsch will join his former Numb3rs co-star Rob Morrow on Rob’s new fall show The Whole Truth, starring as Ruben Wright, a distinguished and well-respected judge who is accused of corruption and murder. He hires Morrow’s rising criminal attorney to represent him. Maura Tierney’s character, who tried the first case of her career in front of Judge Wright, reluctantly takes on the task of prosecuting him. The Whole Truth premieres on September 22. Hirsch’s episode is slated to air in October.

Reggie Austin (Life Unexpected and The Starter Wife) will play the New York baseball star husband of Vanessa Williams’ new housewife, Renee Perry, on Desperate Housewives.

Alicia Coppola (Jericho) will guest star in an upcoming episode of NCIS: Los Angeles, playing FBI agent Amy Rand, an expert on kidnapping cases. Her first appearance is slated to air in October. NCIS: Los Angeles returns with back-to-back episodes on Tuesday, September 21 at 9 PM on CBS.

Angela Sarafyan has joined the cast of The Good Guys in a major recurring role, playing the offbeat and socially awkward Samantha Evans. Since she’s a lowly assistant crime scene investigator, she jumps at the chance to help Jack (Colin Hanks) and Dan (Bradley Whitford) with their cases. Angela has appeared on such series as The Mentalist, In Plain Sight and CSI: NY. The Good Guys will move to Fridays this fall, starting on September 24 at 9 PM on FOX.

Newcomer Simon Miller has been cast as the patriarch of the Lockwood pack, George Lockwood, on The Vampire Diaries. He will appear – in flashbacks – in the 4th episode of Season 2.

Amy Sedaris (Strangers with Candy) and Tom Cavanagh (Ed) are set to guest star in an upcoming episode of Royal Pains when the series returns for its first ever winter season this January on the USA Network. Sedaris will play Nan Noonan, Jill’s partner for a Hamptons golf tournament, while Cavanagh will play pro golfer Jack O’Malley.

Six-time WWE champion Batista, and actors Eric Roberts and Joel David Moore (Bones) will guest star as Casey’s (Adam Baldwin) former soldier-of-fortune buddies from the Clinton era in the 5th episode of Chuck.

Devon Sawa (Final Destination) will play the role of Owen in the new CW series Nikita. He will be Nikita’s (Maggie Q) nemesis starting with the 5th episode, which is expected to air on October 7. Owen is described as a highly trained Division agent who is equal to Nikita in skill.

Timothy Dalton (License to Kill) will guest-star in a multi-episode arc on Chuck, playing a mysterious stranger who has a history with Chuck’s mom, who will be played by Linda Hamilton (Terminator and Beauty & the Beast).

Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) will guest star on Grey’s Anatomy as a patient named Eleanor who blacks out, but her black outs may not be all they seem, as Eleanor claims she blacked out right around the time she raced into a Laundromat and caught her naughty husband folding another woman’s panties.

Allison Miller (the short-lived NBC drama Kings) has joined the FOX drama Terra Nova, which stars Jason O’Mara (Life on Mars). The time-traveling drama revolves around humans from 2149 who travel back 85 million years to pre-historic Earth to try to save the planet from destruction. Miller will play Skye, a Terra Nova resident who bonds with O’Mara’s character’s son. Terra Nova was originally scheduled to premiere mid-season, but was pushed back to fall 2011. Fox will preview the pilot in May before launching the first season in the fall.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

The following new movie and specials will air this weekend and throughout next week:

The 62nd Annual Emmy Awards will air live on NBC at 8 PM (Eastern Time) on Sunday, August 29.

The ABC special CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock will air at 8 PM on Wednesday, September 1.

The Disney movie Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam movie will air at 8 PM on Friday, September 3.

Here are the new episodes of the dramas that will be airing this coming week:

Saturday, August 28:
Persons Unknown on NBC at 8 and 9 PM (Final Episodes)
Being Human on BBC America at 9 PM

Sunday, August 29:
The Glades on A&E at 10 PM
Rubicon on AMC at 9 PM
Mad Men on AMC at 10 PM
True Blood on HBO at 9 PM
Hung on HBO at 10 PM
Entourage on HBO at 10:30 PM
Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime at 9 and 10 PM (Two Hour Finale)

Monday, August 30:
The Secret Life of the American Teenager on ABC Family Channel at 8 PM
Huge on ABC Family Channel at 9 PM (Part 2 of 2 – Finale)
The Closer on TNT at 9 PM
Rizzoli & Isles on TNT at 10 PM
Lie to Me on FOX at 9 PM
Weeds on Showtime at 10 PM
The Big C on Showtime at 10:30 PM

Tuesday, August 31:
Melissa & Joey on ABC Family Channel at 8 PM
Make It Or Break It on ABC Family Channel at 9 PM
Rescue Me on FX at 10 PM (Finale)
Warehouse 13 on Syfy at 9 PM
White Collar on USA at 9 PM
Covert Affairs on USA at 10 PM
Unnatural History on Cartoon Network at 8 PM

Wednesday, September 1:
Psych on USA at 10 PM
Dark Blue on TNT at 9 PM

Thursday, September 2:
Rookie Blue on ABC at 9 PM

Friday, September 3:
Eureka on Syfy at 9 PM
Haven on Syfy at 10 PM

NOTE: Please check your local listings for the correct air dates and times for all of the above.

Have a great weekend!