Small Screen: ABC Announces Midseason Schedule, Pushes ‘The Wonder Years’ Season Two Premiere To Summer; Lin-Manuel Miranda Joins ‘Percy Jackson’ Series on Disney+
Denise Hahn - Fox
Broadcast: NBC is currently developing a new primetime soap opera called K-Town, about three influential families that run L.A.’s Koreatown. The family drama about money, murder, and cultural identity comes from The Cleaning Lady executive producer Denise Hahn and her co-writer Michael Notarile through WBTV. Hahn’s other writing credits include Grey’s Anatomy, Pure Genius, Rise, and As We See It.
The ABC reboot of The Wonder Years has had its second season premiere pushed to summer of 2023. The specific date will be announced later for the comedy from 20th Television and the second season guest stars include Patti LaBelle, Wayne Brady, Tituss Burgess, Donald Faison, Phoebe Robinson and Bradley Whitford. Based on the original 1988 series but set in Montgomery, Alabama in the 60’s, the current show is narrated by Don Cheadle, the grown up versions of 12-year-old Dean Williams, played by Elisha “EJ” Williams. Dulé Hill Saycon Sengbloh, Laura Kariuki, Julian Lerner, Amari O’Neil, and Milan Ray also star while Lee Daniels, Saladin K. Patterson, Marc Velez, and Bob Daily serve as executive producers.
ABC has also officially announced that the Gina Rodriguez comedy Not Dead Yet is officially part of its midseason schedule. It will premiere February 8 and air along with the final season of the drama A Million Little Things. It was also announced that the Ramon Rodriguez procedural Will Trent will premiere on January 3, paired with The Rookie and its spinoff The Rookie: Feds starring Niecy Nash-Betts, and that new episodes of the Quinta Brunson comedy Abbott Elementary will launch on January 4.
CBS is developing two two drama projects from NCIS: Hawai’i executive producer Larry Teng. Teng has an overall deal with CBS Studios and will executive produce and direct a military drama called, Eagle Eye, written by FBI co-creator Craig Turk, and a crime drama, Mastermind, from writer Sallie Patrick (Dynasty), Nina Tassler and Denise Di Novi’s PatMa Productions and CJ Entertainment’s K-drama producer and distributor Studio Dragon. Eagle Eye is about an elite, handpicked team of airmen, military detectives and civilian agents within the Office of Special Investigations who investigate crime and counterterrorism for the Air Force, Space Force and U.S. Cyber Command. Mastermind tells the story of a detective with the mysterious ability to scan memories through touch and a criminal profiler who team up in a specialized government task force.
Viet Thanh nguyen - The sympathizer
Cable: HBO is rounding out its cast for the upcoming adaptation series of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer from A24 and Robert Downey Jr that’s currently in production in Los Angeles and Thailand. Downey co-stars with a largely Vietnamese cast, including Hoa Xuande (Cowboy Bebop), Fred Nguyen Khan (Transplant), Toan Le, and Vy Le and Alan Trong (The Tomorrow War). Sandra Oh (Killing Eve), Kieu Chinh (Dynasty) and Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen (Paris By Night) will also play key roles the series described as a “blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping spy novel and a powerful story of love and friendship.” Set during the final days of the Vietnam War, the thriller focuses on a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy who is exiled from the United States. Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Decision To Leave) serves as co-showrunner , along with Don McKellar, and also will direct the series. The two executive produce with Downey, Susan Downey, Amanda Burrell, Niv Fichman, and Kim Ly.
Aoi Takeya - Rodin Eckenroth
Streaming: The Peacock series Dr. Death has cast The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’s Edgar Ramirez as the lead of the show’s second season. Ramirez is set to play Paolo Macchiarini, a real-life surgeon nicknamed the “Miracle Man” who was the subject of the third season of the Wondery podcast on which the series is based. The upcoming season will have Season One writer and producer Ashley Michel Hoban as writer and showrunner, with Dr. Death’s creator Patrick McManus serving as executive producer, along with Hoban, Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Steve Tisch, Taylor Latham, Aaron Hart, Hernan Lopez, Marshall Lewy, and Linda Gase. The first half of the season will be directed by Jennifer Morrison with the latter half directed by Laura Belsey.
The upcoming Disney+ series Percy Jackson And The Olympians has cast actor and songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda as Hermes. Based on the popular YA novels by Rick Riordan about Greek mythology, Percy Jackson stars Walker Scobell (The Adam Project) as the titular 12-year-old who discovers he’s the son of the Greek god Poseidon and begins training to become a hero at a special training camp for demigods called Camp Half Blood. The Emmy, Tony, and Grammy winner joins other cast members Virginia Kull, Glynn Turman, Jason Mantzoukas, Megan Mullally, Timm Sharp, Dior Goodjohn, and Charlie Bushnell. Production began in Vancouver in June and the first teaser was released at the D23 Expo in September.
Former Saturday Night Live cast member Sasheer Zamata is joining the WandaVision spinoff Agatha: Coven Of Chaos on Disney+. The new Marvel series stars Kathryn Hahn as her WandaVision character Agatha Harkness and will also feature Joe Locke, Aubrey Plaza, Ali Ann, Maria Dizzia, and WandaVision actor Emma Caulfield Ford reprising her role as Dottie. The show is written and executive produced by WandaVision creator Jan Schaeffer under a joint overall deal with Marvel and 20th Television.
How To Be A Bookie, the new series from HBO Max has starring comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, has added Omar J. Dorsey and Jorge Garcia to its cast. According to reports, the eight-episode series co-created by Chuck Lorre and Nick Bakay follows a “veteran bookie (Maniscalco) who struggles to survive the impending legalization of sports gambling, increasingly unstable clients, family, co-workers, and a lifestyle that bounces him around every corner of Los Angeles, high and low.” Dorsey (Queen Sugar) plays his partner in their LA-based bookie business and Garcia (Lost) plays a weed dealer who had a similar experience when pot was legalized. Lorre, Bakay, and Maniscalco all executive produce the series from Warner Bros Television along with Judi Marmel.
Japanese-American actor Aoi Takeya (Inheritance) has been cast in the second season of the HBO Max series Tokyo Vice. Loosely based on American journalist Jake Adelstein’s nonfiction book Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, the crime drama takes place in the 1990’s and stars Ansel Elgort as Adelstein and Ayumi Tanida as a yakuza crime lord, along with Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe, Rachel Keller, Ella Rumpf, Rinko Kikuchi, Hideaki Ito, Show Kasamatsu, Tomohisa Yamashita, Shun Sugata, Masato Hagiwara, and Kosuke Toyohara. Takeya joins the cast as Jason Oki, a Japanese-American member of the US Foreign Service. The series is written by J.T. Rogers, who executive produces with Michael Mann, Adelstein, Elgort, Watanabe, Alan Poul, Emily Gerson Saines, Brad Kane, Destin Daniel Cretton, Kayo Washio, and John Lesher.
Actors Tenzing Norgay Trainor (Boo Bitch, Liv And Maddie) and Peggy Blow have been cast as series regulars in the upcoming spinoff of Netflix’s young adult series On My Block. Freeridge, named after the fictional Los Angeles neighborhood that On My Block takes place in, was ordered to series in September of 2021 and production of season one has already been completed. Both Trainor Blow, who appeared in On My Block as Abuelita, will play unknown roles in Freeridge while Paula Garcés, Eric Gutierrez, Eme Ikwuakor and Raushanah Simmons will recur in their roles from the original series. They join previously announced series regulars Keyla Monterroso Mejia, Bryana Salaz, and Ciara Riley Wilson. The spinoff was ordered in September 2021 before the release of On My Block’s fourth and final season, and production on Season 1 has now been completed.
Mara Brock Akil will serve as showrunner and executive producer of a series inspired by the the 1975 Judy Blume novel Forever for Netflix. The reimagining is described as “an epic love story of two Black teens exploring romance and their identities through the awkward journey of being each other’s firsts”, and the series is the second small screen adaption of Forever, following a CBS made-for-TV movie that aired back in 1978. The novel was often banned because it dealt with teen sexuality, but it eventually won the Margaret Edwards Award for its contribution to YA literature in 1996. Both Blume and Brock Akil will executive produce along with Susie Fitzgerald and Erika Harrison.
The first trailer for the series adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s acclaimed 1979 novel Kindred that will stream on Hulu has been released. The TV adaptation stars Mallori Johnson as Dana James, a young Black aspiring writer being tossed between modern day Los Angeles and 1815 Maryland during the Antebellum period of the South. The eight-episode series also stars Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, Gayle Rankin, Austin Smith, David Alexander Kaplan, Sophina Brown, and Sheria Irving and was developed for television by producer/playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Watchman, Outer Range). It comes from FX productions and is executive produced by Jacobs-Jenkins, Joe Weisberg, Joel Fields, Courtney Lee-Mitchell, Jules Jackson, Darren Aronofsky, and the pilot’s director, Janicza Bravo.
The Orville: New Horizons’s Imani Pullum has been tapped to play the lead in Kagiso Lediga’s upcoming project for Amazon Freevee. The Queen Sono creator is developing an eight-episode series with Skybound Entertainment, Sony Pictures Television, and Johannesburg-based producer Diprente about a 15-year-old named Ella who must leave her home in Oakland, California and spend the remainder of her secondary education with her father and Dianne in Johannesburg, South Africa after she’s arrested at a protest. Pullum is set play the lead role in the coming-of-age drama, which will be available to audiences in Africa through Netflix. The production team includes Lediga as creator, showrunner, lead director, and writer, with Tebogo Malope and Karabo Lediga also serving as directors. Karabo Lediga, Camilo Saloojee, Meja Shoba, Christopher Steenkamp, and Nomawonga Khumalo will also write for the show and Kagiso Lediga, Tamsin Andersson, Robert Kirkman, David Alpert, Rick Jacobs, and Sean and Bryan Furst will executive produce.
Kevin Hart - David Livingston / Stringer
Industry: Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Media Company and the Black-owned comic publishing house, Black Sands Entertainment have inked a partnership deal that gives Hart an equity stake in the company. Hartbeat will offer strategic advisory services to BSE known for popular graphic novels Black Sands and The Seven Kingdoms. The multi-platform publishing company was founded by the husband-and-wife team of Manuel and Geiszel Godoy, who appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank and scored investments from both Mark Cuban and guest shark Hart. The company has since sold 200,000 print copies of its comic books, resulting in $2 million in sales since its inception, in addition to running a successful Kickstarter campaign.
NBCUniversal’s diversity, equity and inclusion brand for the company’s television portfolio, NBCU Launch, has revealed the class for its 2022-2023 Directors Program and Female Forward. Tayo Amos is a Nigerian-American filmmaker and USC graduate who’s Magnolia Bloom and On the Clock have streamed on Peacock and Amazon Prime. She will direct for Chicago Fire in the program. Melanie D’Andrea was born in Venezuela and raised in South Florida, and is a Ryan Murphy Half Initiative fellow and a two-time DGA Award recipient. She will direct a Telemundo Global Studios-produced series for the program along with queer Afro-Latina writer-director and Emerson College graduate Kryzz Gautier (Gordita Chronicles) from the Dominican Republic. Gia-Rayne Harris is a graduate of AFI’s Directing Program and a finalist for the HBO Short Film Award at ABFF who features womxn and people of color in her projects. She is set to direct for Chicago P.D.
Amazon Studios Head of Television Vernon Sanders has set a new structure for its US/Global original content operations. Sanders has created three creative development teams shepherding programming across SVOD, AVOD and FAST channels and has split the development of scripted content for Prime Video into two categories: projects produced solely by Amazon Studios and those coming from outside studios as co-productions. One of the new team leaders is Lauren Anderson, Head of AVOD Programming and Studios Unscripted across US Prime Video and Freevee. She leads Traci Blackwell, who will focus on expanding Prime Video and Amazon Freevee’s YA, Faith-based, and culturally-diverse content offerings, and Christel Miller, who will formally lead AVOD Scripted development.
Actor Beulah Koale, who played returning former Navy SEAL Junior Reigns on CBS’s Hawaii Five-o has signed with A3 Artists Agency for theatrical representation. The New Zelander, who recently appeared in the sci-filler thriller Dual, will next be seen in Taika Waititi’s upcoming comedy Next Goal Wins, based on the 2014 documentary of the same name. He continues to be represented by Red 11 Management, Alan Siegel Entertainment, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman, et al.
CSI: Vegas co-executive producer Safia M. Dirie has signed a new two-year overall deal with CBS Studios. Under the new deal, she is developing the drama series Cambridge with Bruckheimer Television, about a world-class pathologist who is assigned to lead a team of medical investigators tasked to diagnose mysterious diseases at her former hospital. Dirie will write and executive produce the series with Jerry Bruckheimer and Kristie Anne Reed.