The Weekly Round-Up for July 4 to July 8

Here are the entertainment news items for this past week:

TELEVISION

The USA Network has picked up another pilot. The new series Common Law has been given an 11 episode order. The series stars Michael Ealy (FlashForward) and Warren Kole (Mental), who play wildly different cops who are the elite team in the LAPD homicide squad until their constant bickering gets them put on probation. To fix their problems, their captain (Jack McGee) sends them to couples therapy.

ABC has sold the online rights to the canceled soaps All My Children and One Life to Live in a multi-year deal to Prospect Park, a company led by Royal Pains executive producers Rich Frank and Jeff Kwatinetz. The company is in the process of finalizing the funding for an as-yet-unnamed online TV network that would feature the soaps and eventually other programming.

A&E is bringing back its drama series Breakout Kings for a second season.

TNT has given the greenlight to Dallas, an all-new series based upon the popular night-time soap opera. Set in the big state of Texas, Dallas stars Josh Henderson (90210), Jesse Metcalfe (John Tucker Must Die), Jordana Brewster (Fast & Furious), Julie Gonzalo (Veronica Mars) and Brenda Strong (Desperate Housewives). They will be joined by iconic stars Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray and Larry Hagman. TNT has ordered 10 episodes and the series is slated to premiere in the summer of 2012.

TNT has renewed Falling Skies for a second season. There will be 10 episodes for the second season, which is slated to air in summer 2012.

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Russell T Davies (the man behind Doctor Who and the creator of the Showtime series Queer As Folk) is back at the premium cable network with a new drama series in development titled Cucumber. Details about the plot are not available at this time.

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Author Stephenie Meyer (the woman behind the Twilight books) and female director-writer Jerusha Hess (co-writer of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre) will be working together on the film adaptation of the chick-lit novel Austenland. The novel focuses on a young woman obsessed with Colin Firth’s character, Mr. Darcy, in the BBC production of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The cast of this film includes Keri Russell (Felicity), JJ Field (Captain America), Bret McKenzie (The Flight of the Conchords), Jennifer Coolidge (Legally Blonde), Jane Seymour (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) and James Callis (Battlestar Galactica).

Some big names will be appearing in the upcoming box office comedy film called Gods Behaving Badly. Based on the novel by Marie Phillips, the story deals with a mortal couple (Alicia Silverstone and Ebon Moss-Bachrach) who encounter the Olympian Gods who are currently residing in a brownstone in modern-day New York. Among the big names are: Christopher Walken as Zeus, John Turturro as Hades, Sharon Stone as Aphrodite, Oliver Platt as Apollo, Edie Falco as Artemis, Phylicia Rashad as Demeter, Nelsan Ellis as Dionysus and Rosie Perez is Persephone.

Actor Rodrigo Santoro (Lost and Love Actually) is set play Jennifer Lopez’s husband in the upcoming film What To Expect When You’re Expecting, which is an adaptation of the best-selling pregnancy guidebook. Cameron Diaz, Anna Kendrick and Brooklyn Decker also star in the film, which tracks several couples who suffer the joys and pains of the childbirth process. Santoro will play a music business executive who isn’t quite ready to have a child but goes along with his wife’s plan to adopt.

Actress Abigail Spencer (Mad Men and the upcoming box office film Cowboys and Aliens) has joined the cast of the upcoming film Oz, the Great and Powerful which is a pseudo-prequel to the L. Frank Baum’s classic novel The Wizard of Oz that shows how a traveling mid-Western magician (James Franco) crash landed in the magical land of Oz and the three powerful witches (Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams) he runs into. Spencer will play a young woman who is a willing subject of Oz’s magic tricks which the erstwhile magician is performing in Kansas.

Actor Giovanni Ribisi will co-star in the period crime drama called The Gangster Squad that is based on a series of Los Angeles Times articles. The true story tale follows a secret “off the record” police task force in the 1940’s who pursued high-profile gangster Meyer Harris “Mickey” Cohen (Sean Penn), a member of the so-called “Jewish Mafia”. Ribisi will play Conway Keeler, a cop in the group who is a master of electronics and wires. Also among the cast are Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Anthony Mackie and Michael Pena.

Veteran talents Vanessa Redgrave and Terrence Stamp are set to lead the box office film called Song for Marion, which follows a progressive choir composed of elderly men and women singing contemporary pop and rock songs. Redgrave will play Marion while Stamp plays her husband Arthur, who is reluctant to join the choir with Marion. But of course she and the choir leader, to be played by Gemma Arterton (Prince of Persia), want him there. In addition, Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who) and Anne Reid (2010’s Upstairs Downstairs) also star in the film that will feature songs from Motorhead, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Cyndi Lauper.

MADE FOR TV MOVIE NEWS

The Hallmark Hall of Fame (HHOF), a staple of CBS Sunday nights for 16 years, is moving to ABC this fall. In the new arrangement, the HHOF will air its three-a-year productions Sunday nights before Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. And then those movies will reair one week later on the Hallmark Channel. Currently filming in Detroit is the HHOF movie to be based on a Mitch Albom book called Have a Little Faith that stars Bradley Whitford, Laurence Fishburne and Martin Landau and the HHOF is planning a return to the Hallmark screen of the ageless Betty White.

Actress Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) will play Miss Haversham in a new version of Great Expectations in a new adaptation of the Dickens classic for the BBC. The three-part drama will air on BBC One this Christmas to celebrate the 200th birthday of Dickens in 2012. But there is no word yet on when this adaptation will air in America, though. Meanwhile, actor Ray Winstone (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) has signed on to play escaped criminal Magwitch and relative newcomer Douglas Booth will play the orphan hero Pip. Also actor David Suchet (Poirot) will play Jagger and Mark Addy (Game of Thrones) will play Pumblechook.

NOTE: The weekly calendar and the casting scoop will appear separately this week.