When watching VH1's latest reality show, you might want to keep your finger on the volume button. The cable channel is partnering with Lionsgate for Scream Queens, an eight-episode competition show featuring 10 aspiring actresses hoping to land a role in a Lionsgate horror film, says the Hollywood Reporter. Actress Shawnee Smith (Saw), writer/director James Gunn (Dawn of the Dead, Scooby-Doo) and acting coach John Homa will serve as the judges. Additionally, Smith will act as host of the show, Homa will coach the girls in each challenge and Gunn will direct the contestants' weekly performances. So, does this news make you want to Scream? — Adam Bryant
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He's come a long way from Firehouse Dog. Bruce Greenwood has landed the role of Captain Kirk's predecessor, Christopher Pike, in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek prequel.... Saw slasher Shawnee Smith, Texas Chainsaw Massacre babe Erica Leerhsen and Day of the Dead's AnnaLynne McCord have been cast in Slaughter, as actresses unwittingly hired to be in a Japanese snuff film.... Billy Bob Thornton has been tapped to play a good-guy G-man in Eagle Eye, a thriller in which Shia LaBeouf (of all people) is accused of being a terrorist. — Ben Katner
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Who's doing what this pilot season? Per Variety and the Hollywood Reporter:• Missi Pyle (Heroes, The Wedding Bells) will join Shawnee Smith (Becker) and Virginia Williams (Monarch Cove) in ABC's Traveling in Packs, a comedy about three women in their thirties who live together.• Dondre T. Whitfield (Girlfriends) and Christine Woods are en route to CBS' Atlanta, playing the best friends of Freddie Prinze Jr. and Leslie Bibb, respectively.• Barry Shabaka Henley (Barbershop) is an internal-affairs investigator in NBC's David Shore/Peter Blake drama starring Famke Janssen as a cop.• Jerrika Hinton is an art-gallery owner in the CW's Eight Days a Week.• The CW's I'm Paige Armstrong is now called I'm Paige Wilson, while ABC's newsroom comedy from Ric Swartzlander (Rodney) now has a title (get your final guesses in now, hurry!): The News.
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The latest pilot developments, per Variety and the Hollywood Reporter:• Could Donald Sutherland and Jill Clayburgh be the new Larry Hagman and Linda Gray? ABC is hoping so — they've given the veteran actors the lead roles of the heads of a super-rich family in their drama pilot Dirty Sexy Money. (Personally, I would have gone with Stockard Channing.)• NYPD Blue alum Bonnie Somerville has replaced Miranda Otto as a cosmetics mogul in Darren Star's new Execs and the City pilot Cashmere Mafia. Otto will now play a hotelier.• Wendie Malick is a Democratic senator in an untitled ABC comedic soap about legislative aides on Capitol Hill. • Arielle Kebbel (The Grudge 2) is Kiele Sanchez's kid sister in ABC's Football Wives.• Saw psycho Shawnee Smith has been cast in ABC's Traveling in Packs, a comedy about thirtysomething women who tell themselves being roomies is cool rather than pathetic.• Harold Ramis has been tapped to direct Atlanta, the CBS comedy st...
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Question: Is someone making a new remake of The Blob, or am I going insane? If so, do you have any plot details? I hope they cast Shawnee Smith in the lead again — she was awesome in the '88 version.Answer: Superproducer Scott Rudin is indeed developing another remake of the 1950s sci-fi/teen picture The Blob for Paramount Pictures. The screenwriters include House of Wax remake scripters Chad Hayes and Carey Hayes, and Joe Ballarini, who's sold several high-profile but unproduced scripts. The Blob deal was struck immediately after Revolution Studios secured the rights to remake
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