Small Screen: 'Days Of Our Lives' Moving To Peacock; Ncuti Gatwa Confirmed For Season 4 Of 'Sex Education'; HBO Max And Discovery+ To Merge
NBC Universial
Broadcast: New Girl’s Hannah Simone has been cast in ABC’s Not Dead Yet, a new series based on Alexandra Potter’s 2020 book Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up. Simone plays Sam, a new character added as a friend and colleague of star Gina Rodriguez’s newly single Nell, as the show revamps itself into more of a workplace comedy. Sam is a newspaper editor and working mom, while Nell is a once successful journalist who now writes obituaries. Set to debut midseason, the show is executive produced by creators Casey Johnson and David Windsor, with Rodriguez, Wonderland Sound and Vision’s McG, Mary Viola, and Corey Marsh.
The iconic NBC soap opera Days Of Our Lives is moving exclusively to the streaming service Peacock starting on September 12th, leaving just three soaps on broadcast television: ABC’s General Hospital and CBS’s The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. NBCUniversal Television and Streaming chairman Mark Lazarus state “with a large percentage of the Days of Our Lives audience already watching digitally, this move enables us to build the show’s loyal fan base on streaming while simultaneously bolstering the network daytime offering with an urgent, live programming opportunity for partners and consumers.” Peacock has previously aired the Days-branded miniseries Beyond Salem as well as older episodes from past seasons and their popularity, combined with the original series’ low viewership (it only averages about 1.7 million viewers per day, which is half of The Young And The Restless audience) maybe what spurned this move to end its epic 57-year run.
A new drama from BAFTA-nominated Timewasters creator Daniel Lawrence Taylor and Three Girls producer Studio Lambert has been greenlit by BBC Three. Lawrence Taylor’s first writing project for the BBC, the six-part series Boarders will follow five underprivileged Black students from inner-city London who win scholarships to an elite Harry Potter-esque British boarding school. The show was commissioned by Ben Irving, Acting Director of BBC Drama, and Fiona Campbell, Controller of BBC Three. Lawrence Taylor will also serve as Executive Producer along with Susan Hogg and Maddie Sinclair for Studio Lambert, and Ayela Butt and Gaynor Holmes for the BBC.
Daniel Kwan - Michael Yada
Cable: Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (Everything Everywhere All At Once), also known as The Daniels, are teaming up with writer, cartoonist, and comedian Nathan Min to bring their new half-hour comedy pilot Mason to Showtime. Min, the creator, and the star will executive produce the show with Oscar-nominated actor Steve Yuen, and The Daniels, who will also direct. The title and basis for the show come from Min’s own life experience, as he plays a quiet man named Nathan, which is often misheard as Mason.
Meanwhile, Showtime’s anthology series The First Lady has not been picked up for a second season. The one-hour drama focused on First Ladies Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson), Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Michelle Obama (Viola Davis). Davis also executive produced with writer Aaron Cooley, Julius Tennon via JuVee Productions, Schulman via Welle Entertainment, Gaspin via Gaspin Media and Brad Kaplan via Link Entertainment, and director Susanne Bier. Before this announcement, other first ladies that were considered as subjects for a follow-up season were Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Hillary Clinton, Dolly Madison, Edith Wilson, Martha Washington, Rosalynn Carter, and Melania Trump.
AMC’s The Driver starring Giancarlo Esposito has added Bonnie Mbuli (Catch A Fire) to its cast as a series regular. In this remake of the British drama, Esposito plays a taxi driver named Vince who agrees to chauffeur New Orleans-based Zimbabwean gangster “The Horse” (played by Zackary Momoh), and Mbuli will play Shamiso Tongai, The Horse’s smart older sister. The six-part series, produced by AMC Studios in association with A+E Studios and Thruline Entertainment, will launch next year on AMC and AMC+.
Benjamin Flores Jr is among the list of actors on the Showtime drama Your Honor newly promoted to series regular, along with Jimi Stanton and Lilli Kay. Flores plays Eugene Jones on the Bryan Cranston-led show about a respected New Orleans judge whose teenage son’s involvement in a hit-and-run is the catalyst for the dramatic events of the show, including the death of Eugene’s brother, Kofi. Flores appeared in nine of the ten episodes of the show's first season, which is based on the Israeli series Kvodo. At 6.6 million weekly viewers, it had the most-watched debut season for a Showtime series.
Kim rutledge
Streaming: An animated version of Chris Rock’s autobiographical comedy series Everybody Hates Chris has received a straight-to-series order from MTV Entertainment and will stream on Paramount + as well as air on Comedy Central. Chris Rock will once again narrate and executive produce the new series Everybody Still Hates Chris that’s inspired by his experiences in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn during the late 1980s. The original series debuted in 2005 and ran for four seasons, earned both Emmy and Golden Globe noms and won an NAACP Image award for writing. It was produced by CBS Studios and 3 Arts Entertainment who will also produce this reimagining of the series, with Sanjay Shah serving as writer and showrunner.
Chicago drag superstar and winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars season 5 Shea Coulee has joined the cast of the Disney+ series Ironheart. The Marvel Studios series, set to launch in 2023, stars Dominique Thorne (If Beale Street Could Talk) as engineering genius Riri Williams, a character that will debut in the upcoming sequel to Black Panther. Coulee joins other cast members Anthony Ramos (In the Heights), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), Lyric Ross (This Is Us), and Manny Montana (Good Girls).
Jordan Peters has been tapped to star in the newly greenlit Amazon Studios series My Lady Jane as King Edward. It is based on YA historical fiction novels by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows about British monarch Lady Jane Grey, who will be played by actress Emily Bader. Edward Bluemel has been cast to play Grey’s husband Lord Guildford Dudley. The production company, run by the husband and wife team of former Dreamworks execs Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, is producing the show.
Two new major casting announcements were made for the Apple TV+ limited series The Big Cigar. Why Women Kill’s Jordane Christie and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Moses Ingram will join the six-episode series about the friendship between Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton and Hollywood producer Bert Schneider. Christie will play the co-founder of the Black Panthers, Bobby Seale, and Ingram will play Teressa Dixon, a former telephone operator turned rising star in the Black Panther Party. The show is based on a Playboy magazine article by Joshuah Bearman and Claws executive producer Janine Sherman Barrois will serve as showrunner. The pilot was written by Winning Time’s Jim Hecht and directed by actor Oscar-nominated actor DonCheadle.
It was announced that Kimi Rutledge with being replacing actress Amalia Yoo in the Netflix action comedy series Obliterated from the creators of Cobra Kai. She’ll be taking over the role of Maya, a rookie NSA tech expert who’s part of an elite Special Forces team that thwarts a deadly threat to Las Vegas, but discovers the bomb was a fake after they’ve already started celebrating and now have to find the real bomb and save the world while intoxicated. The eight-episode series now in production comes from Sony Pictures Television and was written by Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald.
The upcoming Netflix series A Man In Full, starring Jeff Daniels and Diane Lane, has announced a slew of new cast members including The Good Place’s William Jackson Harper, Elementary’s Jon Michael Hill, A League Of Their Own’s Chanté Adams, and The Porter’s Aml Ameen. The six-episode limited series based on Tom Wolfe’s 1998 novel about Atlanta real estate mogul Charlie Croker (played by Daniels) who faces sudden bankruptcy is executive produced by David E. Kelly, who will also write and serve as showrunner, and Regina King, who will direct three episodes. Harper plays Wes Jordan, the incumbent mayor of Atlanta who’s up for re-election, Ameen plays attorney Roger White, Hill plays Conrad Hensley, an employee
of Crocker’s, and Adams plays Jill Hensley, Croker’s assistant.
Rest easy, Sex Education fans - newly crowned Doctor Who Ncuti Gatwa will indeed be returning for the fourth season of the hit Netflix series. It was confirmed that he and creator, writer, and executive producer Laurie Nunn will both be returning, although a number of other castmates including Bridgerton star Simone Ashley, Patricia Allison, and Rakhee Thakrar will not. Gatwa is currently shooting the upcoming season of Doctor Who in Wales, but with a schedule that is allowing him to be in both series.
Annie Q. Reigel has been cast in a major recurring role in the new Hulu series Career Opportunities in Murder and Mayhem starring Mandy Patinkin. The series is from ABC Signature received a 10-episode order from Hulu this year and will go into production this month. Riegel plays a character named Winnie in the show that centers on a once great detective (Patinkin) and his protégée trying to solve a murder on an ocean liner filled with the wealthy and powerful.
Hulu has also ordered the adaptation of Zakiya Dalila Harris’ novel The Other Black Girl from Onyx Collective and Freeform president Tara Duncan to series. First put in development in April 2020, The Other Black Girl tells the story of Nella, an editorial assistant, who is tired of being the only Black girl at her company, and discovers something sinister is going on when they finally hire Hazel, whose star begins to quickly rise. Soon after development began, Duncan was named President of Freeform and then was tapped to lead Onyx Collective in May of 2021. Since then Danielle Henderson has been set as the series showrunner and executive producer, alongside Duncan, Rashida Jones, Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen, and Wyck Godfrey, Adam Fishbach, and author Harris.
Warner Bros Discovery
Industry: Writer-director Sadé Clacken Joseph, who recently directed the first two episodes of Issa Rae’s new HBO show Rap Sh!t, has signed with CAA for representation. The pilot episode titled “Something for the City” launched on July 21 to widespread critical acclaim. Her previous credits include the short film Knight starring Grammy-winner Robert Glasper, Common’s Hope and Redemption Prison Tour documentary, and her short film Ponyboi, which premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.
Grown-ish star Yara Shahidi has extended her overall deal with ABC that now includes Onyx Collective, which focuses on stories from underrepresented communities. Her banner 7th Sun, which she runs with her mom and business partner Keri Shahidi, will continue to develop and produce both scripted and unscripted programming for the studios as part of the exclusive deal that includes working with Freeform and Onyx Collective president Tara Duncan and her various teams. Onyx has also recently made production deals with Ryan Coogler, Destin Daniel Cretton, Prentice Penny, Natasha Rothwell, and Erika Green Swafford.
Warner Bros Discovery has announced that HBO Max will combine with Discovery+ and launch as a single service in the summer of 2023. The new brand name for the merged service has not been announced nor was pricing for the unified streamer. HBO may or may not be part of the name, the company is doing research to determine consumer perception of the HBO Max name. JB Perrette, CEO and president of global streaming and games for Warner Bros. Discovery states that “the merged HBO Max-Discovery+ will combine the best elements of both services” and expects they will have 130 million global streaming subscribers by 2025.