You want the latest skinny? I got your latest skinny right here.
- Dustin Hoffman is migrating to television to headline HBO’s new series Luck, created by David Milch (Deadwood). Variety reports that the show will center on “several eclectic personalities who ply their trade on the horse-racing circuit,” including Hoffman’s character, “a man in his late 60s just released from four years in prison who’s autodidactic, intelligent, and deeply involved in gambling.” The show is predicted to debut in January.
- The network is also developing a yet-to-be-titled series in which Kevin Kline will portray a man just released from prison fifteen years after murdering his mistress. Was he cellmates with Dusty Hoffman?
- And hey, Diane Keaton is going to HBO, too! Along with Ellen Page! The duo will star in Tilda, a show roughly based on the life of notorious Hollywood journalist/blogger Nikke Finke.
- Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman will co-star in HBO’s television movie Hemingway & Gellhorn about Ernest Hemingway’s love affair with novelist/war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, the woman who purportedly inspired him to write For Whom the Bell Tolls.
- Also, Diane Lane, Tim Robbins, and James Gandolfini will star in HBO’s Cinema Verite, a television movie about the production of groundbreaking TV documentary An American Family.
- And you haven’t forgotten about HBO’s miniseries Mildred Pierce with Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce, have you?
- Kevin Spacey is not going to HBO, but he is going to Showtime. Ha! Twist! He’s in talks with the network to star in his own series, called The Crux, about a high-profile cult.
- True Blood, Breaking Bad, and Justified are all renewed for another season. Hurrah!
- Jason O’Mara (Life on Mars) has signed on the dotted line to star in the Spielberg-produced dino-drama Terra Nova on FOX.
- Ian McShane (Kings), Donald Sutherland (Dirty Sexy Money), and Rufus Sewell (The Eleventh Hour) will star in Starz’s miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, based on the Ken Follett novel of the same name. Starz calls the story an “epic of good and evil, treachery and intrigue, violence and beauty, a sensuous, spirited story set against a backdrop of war, religious strife and power struggles in 12th-century England.” The miniseries begins on July 23.
- Starz apparently loves them some period pieces, because it’s also reinventing the Camelot story with Joseph Fiennes (FlashForward) and Eva Green (Casino Royale).
- The hilarious Old Spice pitchman, whose name is Isaiah Mustafa, has signed a talent deal with NBC, so odds are that we won’t be seeing him only during the ad breaks.
- Syfy is developing a pilot entitled Three Inches about a man with a unique superpower: he can telekinetically move any object three inches. He soon join forces with other individuals with equally questionable abilities. It’s like a lamer-yet-awesomer version of Heroes.
- Michael Rosenbaum (formerly Lex Luthor on Smallville) will star in a Syfy comedy called Saved by Zeroes about two actors who squander the money they earned on a cult-favorite science-fiction television series and now have to work the convention beat to pay the bills.
- Gossip Girl actor Chace Crawford was arrested for possession of marijuana. Furthermore, is everyone incapable of looking good in a mugshot? Moving on.
- AMC is making a zombie show called Walking Dead based on the comic series by Robert Kirkman. Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) is on board to write, direct, and executive-produce the series.
- AMC is also developing a pilot entitled The Killing about a tangled police investigation into the murder of a young girl. Billy Campbell (The 4400) and Michelle Forbes (uh, everything) have joined the cast.
- The pilot Edgar Floats, a comedic drama about a police psychologist, is not dead at ABC—in fact, it has a six-episode script order—but the Alphabet Network did order the recasting of almost the entire cast, including leading-man Tom Cavanaugh (Ed). The only surviving cast member is Robert Patrick (The X-Files).
- MTV is filming its own version of the racy British teen drama Skins. And, like the original, the series will be written largely by teenagers. (Uh, hi, my name is Dan. I was a teenager not too long ago!)
- Also, a film version of the original Skins is in production and set to be released in 2011. Nicholas Hoult and Dev Patel are reprising their parts.
- Rebecca Mader has further endeared herself to me by revealing that she demanded silence while watching Lost, a show on which she starred as Charlotte. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal back in April, Mader mulled over the idea of hosting a finale party but then added, “If someone talks, I will punch them in the head. […] If someone is saying, ‘What’s going on?’ I’ll be like, ‘Oh my God, get out of my house.’ I don’t have the patience.” I think she and I would get along.
- Speaking of Lost, here’s a doooope tribute by The Injustice League. Who knew that Michael Giacchino’s score could be incorporated into a rap so well?