Can I be fierce for a minute?: HOTCHKA Daily News

STREAMING NEWS

★Add more names to the growing all-star roster of Peacock's Natasha Lyonne-Rian Johnson murder mystery series Poker Face -- Simon Helberg, S. Epatha Merkerson and Judith Light. Helberg is best known for playing Howard Wolowitz across 12 seasons of the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Helberg has had roles in several films, picking up a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his role in Florence Foster Jenkins. Merkerson portrays Sharon Goodwin on Chicago Med and was a long-time cast member on Law & Order. Emmy and Tony winner Light was recently seen on HBO Max's Julia and Netflix's Tick,Tick… Boom!

★Marc Maron, Jean Yoon, Judy Reyes and Jeffery Self have joined Amazon's The Horror of Dolores Roach in recurring roles. Justina Machado stars as Dolores Roach, a recently released prisoner who after 16 years returns to find a severely-gentrified Washington Heights with $200 and the clothes on her back. Her boyfriend missing, her family long gone, Dolores reunites with an old stoner buddy, Luis, who gives her room and board and lets her give massages for cash in the basement under his dilapidated storefront Empanada Loca, the only remnant of her former life. When the promise of her newfound stability is quickly threatened, “Magic Hands Dolores” is driven to shocking extremes to survive, and in the face of unexpected professional success, Dolores and Luis become dangerously symbiotic, and Luis must unleash his own peculiar predilections. The eight-episode series is based on the Gimlet podcast of the same name.

★Cameron Diaz is coming out of retirement to star in the Netflix action-comedy Back in Action opposite Jamie Foxx. Details of the film's storyline are being kept under wraps for the time being.

★Michaela Cole, John Turturro and Paul Dano have joined the cast of Amazon's series adaptation of action film Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which will star Donald Glover and Maya Erskine.

★Zane Phillips (Fire Island), Jade Payton (Dynasty), Michael Hsu Rosen (Pretty Smart), Ayesha Harris (Daisy Jones and the Six) and Graham Parkhurst (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) are set as series regulars in Netflix drama series Glamorous. Netflix has confirmed the casting of Kim Cattrall as makeup mogul Madolyn Addison. The series had originally been ordered to pilot at The CW in 2019.

★Not only is Love Island USA getting a new home -- Peacock -- but a new host and a new announcer as well. Modern Family alum Sarah Hyland will take over from Arielle Vandenberg, who hosted the first three seasons on CBS, and Iain Stirling, who voices the UK version of the show, takes over from US fan favorite Matthew Hoffman. The series launches July 19 with six episodes per week.

★Katie Finneran, John Hodgman, Brian Stokes Mitchell will join Mae Whitman and Carlos Valdes in Hulu's musical romantic comedy series Up Here. Set in New York City in 1999, the series follows an ordinary couple (Whitman as Lindsay and Valdes as Miguel) as they fall in love while discovering the single greatest obstacle to finding happiness together might just be themselves. Original songs for the series are from Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez.

TV NEWS

★The sale of The CW network seems to be drawing to a close as Nexstar Media Group is about to acquire a 75% stake in the network whiel current owners Paramount Global and Warner Bros Discovery retain 12.5% each. The deal makes sense because Nexstar is the Number 1 owner of local TV stations in the US, as well as cable network NewsNation and digital brand The Hill. It also already owns a majority of the current CW affiliates in the country. The CW's 2022-2023 season has already been announced so the sale will not affect that programming but what the future looks like is uncertain at this point but there could be more programming coming from outside of the original parent companies.

★Food Network's newest competition series It's CompliPlated, hosted by vegan foodie Tabitha Brown, will premiere Thursday, August 11 at 10:00 PM. In each episode, four chefs compete in three rounds of cooking challenges to create dishes that will please judge Maneet Chauhan (Chopped, Tournament of Champions) and a rotating panel of guest judges, each with a very particular palate and tricky food requirements. From a taste of Southern hospitality using only plant-based ingredients and a comfort food gluten-free noodle dish to an Instagram-worthy dinner party without fruits or vegetables, these unique cooking battles showcase how to make delicious food under any circumstance.

★Ravi Patel is joining FX Network's limited series spin-off Justified: City Primeval in the role of Rick Newley. The series is inspired by Elmore Leonard's novel City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. Timothy Olyphant will reprise his Justified role of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens.

★CSI vet Wallace Langham is joining the second season cast of HBO's Perry Mason. Langham will play Melville Phipps, an attorney for a very wealthy oil baroness. Matthew Rhys stars as Mason. The second season will pick up several months after the end of Season 1.

★Reba McEntire will reunite with Reba co-star Melissa Peterman in the new Lifetime film The Hammer, inspired by the life of traveling circuit court judge Kim Wanker. McEntire's partner Rex Linn and Kay Shioma Metchie also star.

MOVIE NEWS

★Butch Patrick, the original Eddie Munster, has joined the Rob Zombie reimagining of The Munsters as Tin Can Man. Tin Can Man was a robot created by Eddie for a science fair before it was sabotaged on the original series. The film stars Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman Munster, Sheri Moon Zombie as Lily Munster, and Daniel Roebuck as Grandpa, with Catherine Schell, Jorge Garcia, Sylvester McCoy, Richard Brake and Cassandra Petersen. The film will be released this Fall.

★Cole Sprouse and Kathryn Newton will star in Focus Features' Lisa Frankenstein, written by Diablo Cody. Set in 1989, the film follows an unpopular high schooler who accidentally re-animates a handsome Victorian corpse during a lightning storm and starts to rebuild him into the man of her dreams using the broken tanning bed in her garage.

IN MEMORIAM

★Model-maker and artist Gregory Jein died May 22 at the age of 76 following a long history of health issues including diabetes. Jein worked on eight Star Trek properties beginning in 1977 by designing a Klingon battle cruiser that would have been featured in Star Trek: Phase II which would have been the first live-action Star Trek spin-off had it gone forward. Jein worked on Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) with Douglas Trumbull, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and Star Trek X: Nemesis (2002) and the Star Trek shows The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. He scored an Emmy nomination for the Deep Space Nine episode 'Trials and Tribble-ations', and for 2003's HBO mini-series Angels in America. Jein also worked on two Steven Spielberg films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, earning an Oscar nomination, and 1941 on which he spent nearly two years, calling it his most rewarding work. He also contributed work to Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, and his last project was Disney's live-action remake of Mulan. His first credited work was on John Carpenter's Dark Star. Jein served as an art department model maker on Fantastic Four (2005), Serenity, Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, John Carter, Oblivion and Alice Through the Looking Glass. He provided models and miniatures for Flesh Gordon, The UFO Incident, Wonder Woman (TV Series), One From the Heart, Firefox, V (1983 Mini-Series), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, *batteries not included, The Hunt for Red October, The Scorpion King and The Rundown.

★Margaret Keane, who was the subject of Tim Burton's film Big Eye, has died at 94. Amy Adams portrayed Keane in the film with Christophe Waltz as her credit-stealing husband Walter.

TRAILERS

Confessions from the Hart | Official Trailer | The Roku Channel