Welcome to Rumorville! Here you can learn about casting news that’s about to break in Hollywood. These speculations might be only rumors, but that doesn’t mean you can’t follow the trail all the way to the audition room.
“The Boys” Spinoff
“The Boys” are back in town, both with the recently dropped second season and a potential spinoff. According to Variety, Amazon has fast-tracked development on a new iteration of the popular comic book series adaptation. The new project is being described as “an irreverent, R-rated series that explores the lives of hormonal, competitive supes as they put their physical, sexual, and moral boundaries to the test” at America’s only college exclusively for young adult superheroes. Parent series writer-executive producer Craig Rosenberg is writing the pilot and will serve as showrunner and executive producer under his overall deal with Sony Pictures Television, with “The Boys” creator Eric Kripke executive producing. There’s no word yet if anyone from the original series will make it into the spinoff, but you can likely count on “The Boys” casting team Ulrich/Dawson/Kritzer to get it done, if so. While you wait to learn more, read what playing Starlight in the series has added to Erin Moriarty’s acting skills here at Backstage!
“Yakuza”
Now that its big star Sonic the Hedgehog has gotten a semi-live-action adaptation of its own, Sega is looking to bring its second-biggest franchise to life. The video game developer is reportedly working on a live-action adaptation of its “Yakuza” video game franchise, Variety says. The project is expected to depict the story in the games, which follow Kazuma Kiryu after being released from a 10-year prison sentence for taking the fall for the murder of his family’s patriarch, forced back into the lawless world of the yakuza after the Japanese underworld is pulled into the search for $100 million stolen from the vault of his former clan. 1212 and Wild Sheep are behind the adaptation—it isn’t clear if this is intended for film or TV yet—and are now searching for writers for the script.
“Desert People”
First reported by Variety, Natasha Lyonne and Alia Shawkat are teaming up to develop “Desert People,” a new half-hour series at Amazon that will reportedly follow a family of Iraqi immigrants who run a gentleman’s club in Palm Springs. Co-created by Shawkat and Lyonne, Shawkat will write and star as the parents’ adult daughter who is coming to terms with her sexuality and identity as a first-generation American. There’s no word if Lyonne will also make an appearance, but both she and Shawkat will executive produce with Maya Rudolph, Danielle Renfrew Behrens, and Dianne McGunigle. This is the second project out of Lyonne, Rudolph, and Behrens’ first-look deal with Amazon under their Animal Pictures banner after the currently-in-progress animated comedy “The Hospital” at Amazon. No further casting has been announced for either series.
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