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WIRE Buzz: Penny Dreadful follow-up adds familiar face; Terminator gets a title; more
We've got the biggest collection of genre updates this side of the galaxy. Today, we bring you news on the Penny Dreadful follow-up, an AI-based drama/thriller being developed at Fox, a Jekyll & Hyde musical movie, and the sixth Terminator movie.
While Showtime's upcoming Penny Dreadful: City of Angels has already been confirmed as a spiritual companion piece to the original series (not a direct sequel), the show just added a very familiar face in the form of James Bond vet, Rory Kinnear.
Kinnear, who played Dr. Frankenstein's misunderstood monster in all three seasons of Penny Dreadful's original run, will take up the new persona of Dr. Peter Craft in City of Angels. According to the official release, "Craft is a successful German pediatrician and the head of the German-American Bund, an organization he hopes will keep the United States isolated from the growing threat of war in Europe."
The desire to keep the United States away from Hitler's war in Europe was a sentiment also shared by the America First movement, which hoped to see Charles Linbergh elected to office. This very scenario is the basis for Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which is getting its own TV adaptation on HBO.
"It’s no secret that Rory is one of my favorite actors on the planet, and working with him in the original series was inspiring,” said Penny creator/producer, John Logan, in an official statement. “So much so that I wrote this part for him, and I’m thrilled he’ll be joining us in the City of Angels."
City of Angels is set in Los Angeles, circa 1938, where a young detective (played by Daniel Zovatto) is embroiled in a case that involves L.A.'s history, Mexican-American folklore, radio evangelism, and the looming specter of Nazism in the lead-up to WWII.
Natalie Dormer, Adriana Barraza, Jessica Garza, Johnathan Nieves, and Nathan Lane all co-star.
Mad Men and MCU alum, John Slattery, has boarded Fox's AI-based drama, neXT, Deadline has confirmed.
Per the report, Slattery is playing Paul Leblanc, a former tech CEO with a penchant for paranoia and narcissism. To stop a rogue AI from destroying the world, Leblanc must join forces with Homeland Security's crackshot Cybersecurity team.
"Marrying pulse-pounding action with a layered examination of how technology is invading our lives and transforming us in ways we don’t yet understand, the series also presents us with a villain like we’ve never seen before, one whose greatest weapon against us is ourselves," reads Deadline's description of neXT.
The show is written by 24 producer, Manny Coto, and directed by Focus helmers, John Requa and Glenn Ficarra. Fernanda, Andrade, Eve Harlowe, Aaron Moten, Gerardo Celasco, and Michael Mosley all co-star.
The screenwriter of the Oscar-winning Birdman, Alexander Dinelaris’, is working on an adaptation of the 1997 Broadway musical version of Jekyll and Hyde.
"Bringing the gritty potential of Leslie and Frank's stirring gothic musical to the big screen made Jekyll & Hyde the perfect project to launch Lexicon, which is focused on character driven, muscular storytelling," Dinelaris said in a statement published by Broadway World.
Based on Robert Louis Stevenson's famous 1886 novella, Jekyll & Hyde enjoyed a four-year stint on Broadway, the production went global, playing in 28 countries over two decades. It even took in close to $1 billion at the worldwide box office. The plot involves Dr. Jekyll battling against his ill-inclined alter ego, Mr. Hyde.
The music was written by by Frank Wildhorn, the book by Leslie Bricusse, and the lyrics by Wildhorn, Bricusse and Steve Cuden.
"After 30 years of our stage productions playing successfully in almost every major country in the world, we are absolutely thrilled to see our musical version of Jekyll and Hyde becoming a major motion picture," added Bricusse and Wildhorn.
Paramount Pictures has confirmed that the name of the sixth installment in the Terminator franchise will be titled "Dark Fate." Directed by Tim Miller (Deadpool), the film is produced by James Cameron and reunites Linda Hamilton with Arnold Schwarzenegger after all of these years. The movie arrives in theaters Nov. 1
