It Prequel Series Welcome to Derry
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It prequel series Welcome to Derry is coming to HBO. The untitled Rick and Michonne Walking Dead series begins production. Jake Lacy and Alison Brie join Peacock’s Apples Never Fall. Steven Spielberg is developing Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon biopic for HBO. Plus, trailers for Kiefer Sutherland’s Rabbit Hole and Apple original film Tetris, starring Taron Egerton, and more of the biggest news in TV and streaming of the past week.
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It Prequel Series Welcome to Derry Is Ordered to Series at HBO Max
(Photo by Warner Bros.)
Get ready for more Pennywise the Clown, as HBO has officially ordered It prequel series, Welcome to Derry. Set in the world of Stephen King’s It universe, the prequel will take inspiration from King’s It novel and expand the vision established by Andy Muschietti, who directed the feature films It and It Chapter Two.
"We are thrilled to continue this iconic franchise with the brilliant Andy and Barbara Muschietti, Jason Fuchs, and Brad Caleb Kane. This prequel will expand the IT storytelling canvas and bring fans deeper into the terrifying, mesmerizing town of Derry," HBO Head of Original Content Sarah Aubrey said in a statement.
You read that correctly, Andy and Barbara Muschietti are on board, along with Fuchs, who all worked to bring the newest It movies to the big screen, which featured a terrifying update of King’s notorious demon clown Pennywise as played by Bill Skarsgard. It’s unknown, as of yet, if he will reprise the role in this new project.
This isn’t the first time a streaming series has attempted to expand King’s story universe. Hulu’s short-lived Castle Rock program, which was executive produced by J.J. Abrams, brought the author’s multiverse to the small screen and intertwined a collection of his stories and characters (from Misery to Needful Things) from the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, to create a new psychological horror tale.
As Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy map out their adaptation of King’s Dark Tower for television, we can’t help but be excited for the Master of Horror’s enduring influence on small-screen genre entertainment.
"I’m excited that the story of Derry, Maine’s most haunted city, is continuing," King said in a statement. "And I’m glad Andy Muschietti is going to be overseeing the frightening festivities, along with a brain trust including his talented sister, Barbara. Red balloons all around!"
We’re ready to float.
The Walking Dead’s Untitled Rick and Michonne Series Begins Production
(Photo by AMC)
The Walking Dead may be over, but The Walking Dead universe is still alive and kicking. After an extended wait, the six-episode spin-off series following fan favorite characters Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) has begun production in New Jersey. To further whet fans’ appetites, two new behind-the-scenes images (one above, and one below) were released by the network.
(Photo by AMC)
The yet-to-be-titled series is the latest Walking Dead spin-off to go camera up, joining The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, which follows Daryl on new adventures in Europe, and The Walking Dead: Dead City, which centers on Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as they journey out of Georgia to the Big Apple.
Not much is known about the series, aside from the obvious story detail that the love story between Rick and Michonne is set to continue. And their battle against threats both undead, and living, shall endure. The highly anticipated spin-off will debut in 2024 on AMC+
Read also: The Most Anticipated TV and Streaming Shows of 2023
New Trailers: Kiefer Sutherland Falls Down the Rabbit Hole for Paramount+
Kiefer Sutherland will investigate a different type of terrorist threat in Paramount+’s thriller Rabbit Hole. In the new suspense thriller, Sutherland plays John Weir, a master of deception who ends up framed for murder by unseen forces who have the ability to control society and influence populations. Ominous, much?
From the looks of the trailer, this Weir character is no Jack Bauer. And, honestly, that’s a refreshing change of pace. After nine seasons of watching Sutherland’s iconic counter-terrorist agent save the world — and bite out the jugular veins of villains that stand in his way — Rabbit Hole gives the actor a few new character shades to play with.
Then again, the adventures of Fox’s 24 took place in an era before the rise of deep fakes, AI, and all those other cyber threats making waves nowadays. What happens when a self-described master of deception finds himself at the center of a web of lies? Find out when Rabbit Hole premieres on March 26 on Paramount+.
More trailers and teasers released this week:
• Great Expectations is a six-part limited series adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel of the same name by award-winning writer Steven Knight. Premieres March 26. (FX on Hulu)
• Digman! season 1 tells the story of a world in which archaeologists are massive celebrities and the coolest people on the planet. Premieres March 22. (Comedy Central)
• The Magician’s Elephant is based on the classic novel that follows Peter as he searches for his long-lost sister. After a chance encounter with a fortune teller, he embarks on a harrowing journey to find a mysterious elephant and the magician who will conjure it. Premieres March 17. (Netflix)
• The Power is our world, but for one twist of nature. Suddenly, and without warning, teenage girls develop the power to electrocute people at will, resulting in a complete reversal of the power balance of the world. Premieres March 31. (Prime Video)
• Power Book II: Ghost season 3 returns with new twists and new turns as the Tariq, Brayden, Monet, and the Tejadas have to Level Up or Get Taken Down. Fresh off the murder of Zeke, everyone is grieving, but they won’t get much time as a new set of problems and questions arise. Premieres March 17. (Starz)
• Tetris is a new Apple Original Film starring Taron Egerton that is inspired by the true story of how one man risked his life to outsmart the KGB and turn Tetris into a worldwide sensation. Premieres March 31. (Apple TV+)
• Rain Dogs hails from the brilliant new voice of Cash Carraway and is an unconventional love story between a working class single mum, her 10-year-old daughter, and a privileged gay man. Premieres March 6. (HBO and HBO Max)
• Waco: American Apocalypse is an immersive three-part Netflix documentary series, released to coincide with the 30th anniversary of this national tragedy, to provide a definitive account of what happened in Waco, Texas, in 1993 when cult leader David Koresh faced off against the federal government in a bloody 51-day siege. Premieres March 22. (Netflix)
• Unseen narrates the story of a nondescript domestic worker who goes in search of her missing husband and comes up against powerful and violent criminals. Her reaction to the immense and immediate danger she faces is not as timid as she seems. Premieres March 29. (Netflix)
• Chang Can Dunk follows Chang, a 16-year-old, Asian American high school student in the marching band, who bets the school basketball star that he can dunk by Homecoming. The bet leads him on a quest to find the hops he needs to dunk in order to impress his crush, Kristy, and finally gain the attention and respect of his high school peers. Premieres March 10. (Disney+)
For all the latest TV and streaming trailers subscribe to the Rotten Tomatoes TV YouTube channel.
Casting: Jake Lacy and Alison Brie Join Annette Bening and Sam Neill in Peacock Drama Apples Never Fall
(Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images; John Jay/Peacock)
Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award nominee Jake Lacy and Screen Actors Guild Award winner and two-time Golden Globe nominee Alison Brie have been added as series regulars to the cast of Peacock’s upcoming limited drama series Apples Never Fall. They join previously announced talent Annette Bening and Sam Neill, who will play former tennis coaches Joy and Stan Delany, on the project. Lacy will step into the role of the second-oldest Delaney child, Troy Delaney, whose competitive edge as a young tennis player has become his greatest asset as a venture capitalist. Brie’s character is Amy Delaney, the oldest Delaney child and also the black sheep of the family. Lacking direction professionally and personally, it’s clear that Amy is a mess. Apples Never Fall is based on Liane Moriarty’s bestselling novel and centers on the Delaneys who, from the outside, appear to be the picture perfect family, but when Joy goes missing, the Delaney children are forced to re-examine their parents’ marriage and their family history.
Bel-Air has cast Al-Shabazz Jabateh as Hudson, Nicholas Duvernay as Drew, Diandra Lyle as Erika Baker, Justin Cornwell as Lamarcus Alton, and Reno Wilson as James Lewis. They new additions to the drama will all appear in recurring roles for season 2. (Deadline)
Margo Martindale and Chris Diamantopoulos will star in Amazon’s The Sticky. The half hour comedy series, which is being produced by Oscar-nominee Jamie Lee Curtis, follows the true story of "The Great Canadian Syrup Heist," which is a real crime that happened, involving the theft of $18 million dollars (Canadian) of Quebec’s national maple syrup – which so happens to count for more than 70 percent of the world’s maple syrup supply. Martindale will play tough and supremely-competent maple syrup farmer Ruth Clarke and Diamantopoulos will play low-level mobster Mike Byrne. (Variety)
Bridgerton alum Nicola Coughlan and Lydia West of It’s a Sin fame will co-star in Big Mood, a new comedy series for Channel 4. According to the show’s logline, the new series is "a vivacious and rebellious portrayal of female friendship when infiltrated by the complexities of a serious mental illness." (Variety)
Mary Elizabeth Winstead has joined the cast of Gentleman in Moscow. Showtime’s limited series adaptation of Amor Towles’ internationally best-selling novel follows Count Alexander Rostov (McGregor) who finds himself on the wrong side of history during the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and banished to an attic room at the posh Metropol Hotel with constant threats of death by the Soviet government if he were to ever step outside again. Winstead will star as Anna Urbanova, a glamorous, independent and self-made film actress, at the height of her fame. She uses her wit and beauty to dazzle Count Alexander Rostov. Is their romance real, or is this attraction all a ruse?
Melissa George will star opposite Ben McKenzie in ABC’s medical drama pilot The Hurt Unit, which follows a highly skilled team of trauma surgeons and nurses who rush to treat the patients who won’t make it to the hospital in time. George will step into the roe of Dr. Rachel Ashcroft, the Head of Psychiatry and Deputy Chief of Administration at Nashville’s City South Hospital. (Deadline)
Jodie Turner-Smith has joined the cast of Netflix’s Sex Education for its fourth season. She joins new additions Dan Levy, Thaddea Graham, Marie Reuther, Felix Mufti, Anthony Lexa, Alexandra James, and Imani Yahshua. (Variety)
Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Sam Smith will appear in the second season of HBO Max’s Sex and the City sequel series, And Just Like That… Details about who they will play in the series is under wraps, but the show dropped a little teaser on Instagram showing Smith poking their head out of a trailer, with the caption, "Up to something unholy on set."
BMF has added Grammy winning performers 2 Chainz and NE-YO to season 3 in recurring roles. 2 Chainz will play Stacks, an Atlanta-born and -bred distributor whose wisdom and stature command respect wherever he goes. NE-YO will play Rodney "Greeny" Green, a local Atlanta player who’s all about making the bag. Filled with swagger and an entrepreneurial spirit, there’s more than meets the eye to Greeny. BMF is inspired by the true story of two brothers Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory and Terry "Southwest T" Flenory who rose to prominence in Detroit’s criminal underworld in the 1980s. Season 2 is currently airing on Starz.
Onyx Collective’s How to Die Alone has tapped Conrad Ricamora to play boy-crazy Rory, KeiLyn Durrel Jones to play Air Force vet Terrance, and Jocko Sims to play Alex, Melissa’s former boss and current fling in the upcoming eight-episode comedy series for Hulu. They join previously announced star Natasha Rothwell in the series. Sherman’s Showcase and South Side alum Bashir Salahuddin will appear in a recurring role. How to Die Alone will follow Melissa (Rothwell), who the show’s official synopsis describes as a "fat, Black neurotic who’s never been in love. After a comical brush with death, she refuses to settle for anything less than the life she wants, catapulting her on a journey to becoming ‘100% that bitch’ in real life, by any means necessary."
Whoopi Goldberg will guest star in an upcoming episode of The Conners. She will play Mark’s (Ames McNamara) music teacher Ms. Glen who has a complicated history with a member of the Conner family. (Deadline)
Judy Reyes, Deniz Akdeniz, and Javicia Leslie are the latest additions to star opposite Kaitlin Olson and Daniel Sunjata in Drew Goddard’s yet-to-be-titled American adaptation of French detective procedural HPI (High Intellectual Potential). Reyes will play Selena Soto, Akdeniz is Lev "Oz" Osman, and Leslie will play a character named Daphne. (Deadline)/
Emily In Paris star Ashley Park has been added to the season 3 cast of Hulu’s Only Murders In The Building. She will recur as Kimber, a Broadway ingenue. (Deadline)
Richard Armitage, Michelle Keegan, and Joanna Lumley will star in Netflix’s Fool Me Once, an eight-part thriller inspired by the Harlan Coben novel of the same name. Keegan plays Maya Stern, a woman who is struggling to cope after the brutal murder of her husband Joe (Armitage). (Variety)
Country music icon and entertainment mogul Reba McEntire will appear as Mega Mentor on the upcoming season of Emmy-winning singing competition series The Voice. Reba joins superstar coaches Chance the Rapper, Kelly Clarkson, Niall Horan, and Blake Shelton to mentor the artists who make it through the Battle Rounds, as the teams prepare for the Knockouts that commence on April 17. She first appeared as Battle Advisor to Team Blake during the show’s inaugural season and will return as Blake does his final season as coach, before making his exit from the competition series. Season 23 of The Voice premieres Monday, March 6 on NBC.
Production & Development: Steven Spielberg Adapting Stanley Kubrick’s Lost Napoleon Biopic to Series at HBO
Since 2013, Steven Spielberg has been working to develop Stanley Kubrick’s lost Napoleon biopic. Deadline reports that The Fabelmans director is now "mounting a big production" for what has now become a seven-part series for HBO. Originally, Kubrick had planned on making Napoleon after the success of his science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Jack Nicholson, David Hemmings, and Audrey Hepburn were attached to the movie. But after some drawn-out budgetary issues, the film was scrapped and Kubrick moved on to direct 1975’s Barry Lyndon. While attending the Berlin Film Festival, Spielberg revealed, "With the co-operation of Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan, we’re mounting a large production for HBO on based on Stanley’s original script Napoleon. We are working on Napoleon as a seven-part limited series."
Something is Killing the Children, the hit horror comic from James Tynion IV and Boom Studios! that takes place in a town plagued by monsters who prey on children, is getting the adaptation treatment at Netflix from Dark and 1899 creators Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese. The project was previously being developed by Haunting of Hill House creators Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy, who have since left Netflix for Amazon Studios. Odar and Friese will write, showrun, and executive produce the series should it get the greenlight from the streamer. (Hollywood Reporter)
Apple Studios has ordered 10-episode drama series The Last Frontier, from creators Jon Bokenkamp (The Blacklist) and Richard D’Ovidio (The Call) and starring Jason Clarke. Clarke will play U.S. Marshal Frank Remnick, a lone Marshal in charge of the rugged barrens of Alaska, whose jurisdiction is thrown into chaos when a prison transport plane crashes in the remote wilderness, setting free a cavalcade of violent inmates. As he strives to protect the town, he comes to suspect the crash wasn’t an accident.
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is being updated for the social media age. ZDF Studios and Factual Fiction are partnering on the project, which will be titled #DorianGray, and explore topics like sex, gender, mental health, and consent, through the social media-inspired lens of tweets, instagram posts, and TikTok videos, ultimately following Wilde’s original concept of a character who cultivates an image of who he’d like to be, rather than who he really is. (Variety)
In a deal with BBC Studios, Hulu has acquired the U.S. rights to new genre-bending comedy thriller, Am I Being Unreasonable? Written by and starring multi-BAFTA award winner Daisy May Cooper and Selin Hizli, the six-episode series follows Nic (Cooper), who is stuck in a depressing marriage and in the midst of grieving a loss she can’t share with anyone. Her son, Ollie (Lenny Rush) is the only one who keeps her going. But when Jen (Hizli) arrives in town, her life is lit up with laughter and, through this kindred soul, her dark secret starts to come to the surface.
Mike Grist’s action thriller novels have been optioned by Mandalay Television for series development. Ex-CIA operative Christopher Wren is the hero of the six-book series. The story follows Wren as he pursues the worst cult leader in history who is focused to destroy American democracy by pitting the population against each other. (Deadline)
Murder Is Easy is the first Agatha Christie adaptation at the BBC for the post-Sarah Phelps era. The author, who penned the likes of And Then There Were None, The Witness For The Prosecution, Ordeal By Innocence, and The ABC Murders has left the Christie world behind. This new two-part miniseries centers on a man named Luke who learns of a killer on the loose in the sleepy English village of Wychwood under Ashe and takes it upon himself to catch the culprit before he kills again. (Deadline)
The Category Is (wt), a new eight-episode documentary series exploring New York City’s ballroom scene, is in the works from ITV America (Queer Eye) and production studio Good Company (Beyonce’s Lemonade). The unscripted program will be presented through the perspective of one of the scene’s most prominent houses: The House of Miyake-Mugler. (Variety)
TBS is expanding its All Elite Wrestling franchise with new unscripted series AEW: All Access – a follow-doc from the perspectives of the league’s biggest stars. This ultimate behind-the-scenes experience will feature Adam Cole, Dr. Britt Baker, Sammy Guevara, Tay Conti, The Young Bucks, Saraya, Wardlow, and Eddie Kingston along with AEW CEO, GM and Head of Creative Tony Khan. The series will premiere this March.
A Yellowjackets Immersive Pop-up Experience Is Coming to SXSW
Just in time for the season 2 return of Yellowjackets to Showtime, the network is bringing a three-day interactive pop-up experience called "Camp Yellowjackets" to Austin’s South by Southwest festival, inviting fans deeper into the hit thriller’s world.
The "Camp Yellowjackets" installation will premiere during the first weekend of SXSW at the Fair Market in Austin and stay open from Friday, March 10 to Sunday, March 12. Visitors will be invited to "crash into a Winter Wonderland" in an abandoned 1990s-era summer camp. Easter eggs from the show will be featured throughout the event, and fun stuff like feature axe-throwing, BBQ food offerings, and specialty cocktails will be on the docket.
Talent from the show will make an appearance, although those slated to attend have not be announced as of yet. More information can be found at CampYellowjackets.com.