WIRE Buzz: Arrow targets Ernie Hudson; Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist tracks two; more

Arrow is making other news today too, by targeting former Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson to join the cast this season. Deadline reports he'll be playing a four-star general of the DIA in The CW show's seventh season finale, titled "Spartan."

Hudson's character will have to reconnect with Diggle (David Ramsey) to help with a Team Arrow mission, despite some unresolved tensions between the two.

It was also reported earlier today that the upcoming eighth season of Arrow will be its last. The final season will be shortened, with only 10 episodes to wrap up its own story before the next big crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths.

In addition to Ghostbusters and starring in and executive-producing BET's The Family Business, Hudson voiced Robbie Robertson on the Disney XD animated Spider-Man series back in 2017, and had a recurring role in Twin Peaks: The Revival.

The penultimate season finale of Arrow should air sometime this June.

(via Deadline)

Next up, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist has added two more actors to its roster. Deadline reports that Peter Gallagher and John Clarence Stewart will co-star in the NBC pilot.

The series follows Zoey (Jane Levy), a socially awkward girl who suddenly realizes she can hear people's thoughts. The catch is that they manifest as big song-and-dance numbers performed by that person, which only Zoey can see.

Gallagher will play Mitch, Zoey’s father, while Stewart will portray Simon, a marketing executive at Zoey’s tech company. A prolific character actor, Gallagher is currently starring on the X-Men spinoff series The Gifted. Stewart's most recent role was in another Marvel property, playing Alex Wesley on the now-canceled Netflix series Luke Cage.

Assuming the show gets picked up to series, both Gallagher and Stewart would become series regulars.

(via Deadline)

Finally,  XYZ Films is teaming up with Starburns Industries for Welcome to My Daydream, a feature-length documentary about Oscar-winning stop-motion animation icon Will Vinton. 

In addition to looking back on Vinton's impressive career, the documentary will also feature new original claymation scenes using characters he helped design before his death this past October.

Vinton and his partner Bob Gardiner won an Oscar in 1975 for Best Animated Short with Closed Mondays. He also received a nomination for his visual effects work in Walter Murch’s terrifying Return to Oz back in 1986.

However, it wasn't until he created both the California Raisins and Domino's infamous pizza-ruining Noid that his work reached a global audience. His Portland-based Will Vinton Studios was eventually acquired by Nike’s Phil Knight, which morphed into Laika, the stop-motion studio headed by Travis Knight.

Laika has carried on the claymation tradition, earning Oscar nominations for Neil Gaiman's Coraline, Paranorman, and Kubo and the Two Strings.

(via Deadline)