Miranda Otto Joins Homeland For Season 5

As Carrie Mathison heads to Berlin

Homeland has perhaps dropped out of the zeitgeist in these parts since its first two seasons had the nation's watercoolers abuzz with talk of Carrie and Brody's exploits. But the spy series has become an doughty old staple on Showtime and the network will be hoping to inject fresh life into its fifth season with a change of locale and some new faces. Among them are Australian actress and Lord Of The Rings alumnus Miranda Otto.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Otto is joining the Berlin-set season as the CIA’s station head in the city. Her character will report in to Mandy Patinkin’s Saul Berenson. Also aboard are German actors Sebastian Koch (playwright Georg Dreyman in The Lives Of Others) and Alexander Fehling (Inglourious Basterds), as well as The Good Wife’s Sarah Sokolovic. Koch plays a Grman philanthropist and Carrie Mathison's (Claire Danes) new boss, while Fehling is her new boyfriend. Sokolovic is an American journalist.

Season five picks up two and a half years after we last saw Carrie. She's now working for a private security firm in Germany alongside Fehling's character. Presumably her troubled past will return to haunt her fairly swiftly, and he'll turn out to be a KGB mole with a stash of polonium in his pants.

Runs the official synopsis: “Season five will pick up two years after Carrie Mathison’s ill-fated tenure as Islamabad station chief. Struggling to reconcile her guilt and disillusionment with years of working on the front lines in the 'War on Terror', Carrie finds herself in a self-imposed exile in Berlin, estranged from the CIA and working for a private security firm.”

Cameras start rolling shortly in Berlin on the 12-part season, with Rupert Friend and F. Murray Abraham also returning. Otto, meanwhile, will be appearing next in HBO’s small-screen take on Michael Crichton’s Westworld.

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Sofia Coppola Abandons The Little Mermaid

She's no longer directing the live-action Universal tale

One day, someone will finally crack and make a documentary called Creative Differences where they sit directors and executives down, inject them with truth serum and have them explain exactly what the term actual means. The term is being bandied about again as Sofia Coppola has dropped out of making The Little Mermaid. 

It’s the latest director departure for the Universal and Working Title project, which has already seen Pan man Joe Wright considering the job and then move on. Coppola was reported as interested in March, but has decided that her vision didn’t match the studio’s ideas.

Undaunted, Working Title’s Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are pushing on with the idea, with Caroline Thompson rewriting the script based on the classic Hans Christian Andersen tale – brought to memorable, Oscar-winning animated life in 1989 by Disney – in which a young mermaid falls in love with a human prince and makes a tragic deal to live on land. 

Coppola, meanwhile, will focus on editing her current project, a Christmas special featuring Lost In Translation’s Bill Murray for Netflix. Yes, he’s finally found a party even he can’t crash – if only because he’s hosting.

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Eli Roth's Green Inferno Finally Gets Release Date

Blumhouse to the rescue!

A year ago the trailers and stills were creeping online in the usual way in preparation for a September 5 release date. But then suddenly The Green Inferno, Eli Roth's first film as director since 2007's Hostel II was pulled from the schedules over internal problems at financiers Worldview Entertainment. It's been in limbo ever since, but is now finally set to emerge thanks to a new deal with Jason Blum's distribution label BH Tilt.

A bit of notoriety never hurt any horror film in the long run, but sadly The Green Inferno's woes were nothing to do with its grisly content. The boringly prosaic reasons were apparently due to Worldview's new CEO Molly Conners baulking at the publicity-spend commitments made by her outgoing predecessor Christopher Woodrow. The situation left US horror fans crossing their fingers that Green Inferno wouldn't turn into another distribution farrago like All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, which sat in American limbo for seven years after the rest of the world saw it in 2006. 

Enter Blum, who now says, "“When we launched BH Tilt we said our goal was to be part of the continuing evolution of distribution, whether it is through changing marketing strategies, changing revenue sources or changing windows. We are excited to capitalize on new developments in distribution and marketing to bring Eli’s movie to horror lovers across the country.”

“The Green Inferno is a wild, fun ride that took us deeper into the Amazon than anyone has ever taken a film crew,” says Roth. “BH Tilt is a forward thinking label that is helping to redefine how genre movies can be released. I want to express my deep gratitude to the fans for their incredible support of this movie and to everyone at Blumhouse and Universal for making sure fans can experience the film in theaters across the country.”

Roth's tribute to the gonzo Italian likes of Ruggero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi sees a group of student activists head deep into the Peruvian jungle and face the threat of being eaten alive at the hands of a hungry indigent tribe. It was made for an estimated $6m, so wouldn't even have to do much business to go into profit. Given Roth's high profile and the fact that advance word on the film is strong, the decision to drop it was always an odd one.

The Green Inferno will now make its debut on 1000 US screens on September 25. We've never had a release date for the film in the UK at all so far, although it played in Edinburgh last June and at FrightFest in London last August. That means we'll certainly see Roth's subsequent film, the Keanu Reeves-starring Knock Knock, first. That one's out here on June 26.

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VIDEO: Watch John Oliver Slam FIFA in Wake of Corruption Scandal

On Sunday's episode of Last Week Tonight John Oliver took a new shot at FIFA.

"Despite being almost the dictionary definition of corruption," he said, "they've escaped any significant prosecution for decades. But that all ended on Wednesday."

Last week the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it

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Arielle Holmes Finds American Honey

She'll appear with Shia LaBeouf in Andrea Arnold's next film

Wuthering Heights director Andrea Arnold is already at work on her next film – American Honey – with cameras cranking in Oklahoma. So it’s a good thing that she’s found someone besides Shia LaBeouf to star in it, hiring Arielle Holmes.

The film, written by Arnold, follows a runaway teenager who starts selling magazine subscriptions to make money and falls in with a crowd that encourages love, hard-partying and law-breaking. It’s sort of an Almost Famous for the magazine subs crowd, with Arnold making several trips across to the States while researching the script, immersing herself in a real-life magazine sales team. 

LaBeouf’s role remains shrouded in mystery, and Deadline’s story on the film mentions that Holmes isn’t the star, so we’re assuming Arnold has once again found a total newcomer for the main role, but she has yet to release any details. 

Holmes could be a source of information for whoever does rake that primary part, since she spent time living on the streets of New York as a 19-year-old, before she was discovered by filmmakers Joshua and Ben Safdie, who were doing research for a project. They encouraged her to tell her story, which will be published as a memoir and has already become a film starring Holmes and directed by the pair, called Heaven Knows What. The movie has just opened in the US after a successful run at festivals, but there’s no word on a UK release. 

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8 Reasons We Missed Mary Murphy on the So You Think You Can Dance Premiere

So You Think You Can Dance has hit the reset button for its 12th season, and while the stage-vs.-street twist is intriguing, Monday's premiere lacked a certain excitement. To be honest, we missed Mary Murphy.

The veteran judge with the piercing voice and Sharknado-worthy smile was released from her

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• So You Think You Can Dance
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The Bachelorette's Chris Harrison: I'm Still Not Sure What to Make of Clint and J.J.'s Relationship

The Bachelorette is "teasing" a more than bromantic relationship within the house, but host Chris Harrison says he really doesn't know what to make of the situation.

On Monday's episode, Kupah left for good, Tony cursed a lot and left on his own, some of the guys showed us a little more than we had

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