More Cast For Game Of Thrones' 6th Season

James Faulkner and Samantha Spiro head for Westeros

When Ian McShane was cast in an unspecified secret role in Game Of Thrones' sixth season last month, there was some speculation that he might be playing Randyll Tarly, Samwell's father. Well speculate on, since Randyll Tarly has now been officially cast, as have Melessa and Talla.

James Faulkner will be the Tarly paterfamilas, joining Game Of Thrones following stints on Downton Abbey and Da Vinci's Demons. Samantha Spiro, who'll be in the BBC's London Spy next month, is Sam's mother Melessa Tarly. And Sam's sister Talla will be played by Rebecca Benson. Freddie Stroma had already been cast as Dickon.

They're just the latest additions to the cast for the new season, which, along with McShane, includes Pilou Asbæk, Max von Sydow and Richard E. Grant. Grant, like McShane, hasn't had his character officially revealed yet, although the scuttlebut is that he's Izembaro The Great, King Of The Mummers.

The show will, as in recent years, be back in April on HBO and Sky Atlantic, with the story unfolding further ahead of the books than ever...

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Star Trek Beyond Warps To Later Release Date

London Has Fallen also pushed back again

A couple of release date changes here, which will affect you if you're looking forward to Star Trek Beyond and/or London Has Fallen. Both will now open later than originally announced: a couple of weeks in Star Trek's case and a couple of months in the Olympus sequel's.

Star Trek Beyond, the Justin Lin-directed threequel penned by Simon Pegg, had been pegged for July 8 next year, but will now arrive on July 22. This means it'll now face competition from Ice Age: Collision Course and Guy Ritchie's King Arthur. In its previous slot it would have opened against Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates and The Secret Life Of Pets. Have Paramount blinked first in a standoff between the Enterprise and some animated cats and dogs?

London Has Fallen, meanwhile, had already been pushed back three months to get it out of the way of Ridley Scott's The Martian, but is now moving again, from January 22 to March 4 next year. Gerard Butler would have been battling Robert De Niro's Dirty Grandpa on the earlier date, but will now fight for space against Sacha Baron Cohen's Grimsby, Disney's Zootopia, the Aaron Paul thriller Triple Nine and Tim Burton's Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children. 

Olympus Has Fallen played well in March of 2013, so that's part of the thinking there. But Focus Features have also candidly admitted that the extra time will be useful for finessing London's FX. "We’re convinced that we have the potential for a successful film with London Has Fallen," says Focus' Jim Orr, "and we want to give it all the time it needs in its production and put it in the strongest possible release window.”

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New Girl, Meet Your New Roommate, Megan Fox

New Girl, meet the new girl!

Fox announced Thursday that Megan Fox would be joining the cast of the show in the upcoming fifth season. She's going to have a multi-episode arc as a pharmaceutical sales rep named Reagan who sublets a room from Jess (Zooey Deschanel) while she's sequestered on jury

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Kidnappers, Beware! A Taken Prequel Series Is Heading to NBC

Finally, we get to learn how Liam Neeson got his "very particular set of skills"!

NBC has ordered a television series that will serve as a prequel to the Taken film franchise, Deadline reported Thursday.

Sadly, Liam Neeson will not be starring as a younger version of himself. The series will take

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The View Loses Two Sponsors After Offensive Nurse Jokes

Don't mess with nurses!

The View is under fire over some comments Joy Behar and her fellow hosts made earlier this week regarding a Miss America contestant who gave a speech about the nursing profession during the talent portion of the competition.

As of Thursday, both Johnson & Johnson and Eggland's

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Luc Besson Plans Taken TV Prequel

How Bryan got his skill set

As anyone who has watched one of the Taken films will know, Bryan Mills, played in the series by Liam Neeson, is most famous for his particular set of skills. If you ever wondered how he got them – and didn’t immediately answer, “he was an army ranger and in special forces, so he probably picked them up there?” – you’ll be overjoyed to learn that Luc Besson intends to produce a prequel TV show about that very topic. 

Yes, US network NBC has handed Besson, his EuropaCorp company and Universal TV a straight-to-series order for a concept that will see Bryan as a young man – sans wife and child – going on missions and picking up those very skills. Quite why it will be called Taken is beyond us, unless the first episode involves him investigating who stole his first car. And lest you think they’ll have to shell out to make this a period piece, the plan is to forget the films’ setting and have young Mills running around in the present day. Does no one respect narrative continuity anymore?

The next step is to find a writer/producer who can run the show and get this puppy motoring. So... yeah, Hannibal fans, the network ditched it for this.

[[Poll1201]]

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Guillermo Del Toro Says He's Still Working On Pacific Rim

''It’s not gone. We’re still on it...''

Alarms bells howled in the Shatterdome a couple of days ago when, as part of a report on the internal wrangling between Legendary Pictures, Universal and Warner Bros., mention was made that Pacific Rim’s planned sequel – subtitled Maelstrom – had been put on indefinite hold and might never see the light of day. But according to co-writer and director Guillermo del Toro, while there will be a delay, it’s not yet a cause for panic.

Contacted by Entertainment Weekly, the director said he’s still been toiling on the film alongside Zak Penn. “We are still turning in a screenplay and a budget in three weeks. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not gone. We’re still on it.” And yes, while there will be an additional delay, it’s just a temporary one. “It moved further,” he says. “I may do another movie in the middle.” Such is seemingly life for Guillermo: he’s seen various projects move around the schedule. But this has us hoping that it doesn’t suffer the same fate as his Lovecraft adaptation At The Mountains Of Madness, which endured numerous stops and starts, only to be shut down at the last moment.

Pacific Rim might not have generated the sort of box office response that a hefty-budgeted project normally requires to jumpstart a follow-up (made for around $190 million, it staggered past $100 million in the US) but scored a decent $411 global total, including a nice chunk from current hotspot China. And Legendary had seemed to be going full speed ahead on a new instalment set a few years after the original film. Now we suppose it’s more a case of wait and see... GDT, who joined Twitter today, next has gothic romance Crimson Peak on the schedule, set to arrive on October 16.

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