This week:
Jaimie Alexander suffers a serious injury on the set of Thor: The Dark World; Dollhouse alum Tahmoh Penikett joins the cast of Arrow; Lizzy Caplan confirms she won’t be joining the SHIELD TV series’ main cast; Bill Murray once again reunites with Wes Anderson; and Ben Whishaw eyes a role in Spielberg’s Robopocalypse.
Jaimie Alexander — who played Sif in the first Thor and reprises the role for Thor: The Dark World — reportedly suffered a serious injury while filming the Marvel Studios sequel.
Alexander tweeted that she’s “lucky [she is] not paralyzed,” and thanked well-wishers for their kind words. While Alexander’s publicist Chris Schneider would not provide specific details regarding the injury, he did confirm it occurred whilst the actress was walking on a rain-slicked set. Schneider also revealed that the unfortunate injury would not force Thor: The Dark World to halt production, but some parts of the shooting schedule will be shifted around to accommodate Alexander.
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Battlestar Galactica and Dollhouse star Tahmoh Penikett has joined the cast of the CW’s new series Arrow, which is a more realistic take on DC’s Green Arrow comic book character.
Penikett will play Tom Salvati, who is said to be the right-hand man of mob boss Frank Bertinelli (Jeffrey Nordling), one of season 1’s major villains. In addition to being an antagonist for Green Arrow, Bertinelli is father to Helena Bertinelli (Jessica De Gouw), better known to fans as The Huntress.
It’s unclear how long Penikett will be a part of Arrow‘s cast but even a brief stint does provide the show with a little geek cred.
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Lizzy Caplan has confirmed that she will not be joining the regular cast of ABC’s forthcoming SHIELD TV series. Caplan, who plays Claire in the Marvel One-Shot Item 47, was one of the many characters rumored to be joining the show, but this news kills that rumor.
“I can’t really. I have my own show so I will not be a regular on the Marvel S.H.I.E.L.D. show. But I’m glad people are so excited about that. I think it’s a good idea.”
Though Caplan has not ruled out a guest appearance here or there, her commitment to Showtime’s Masters of Sex nixes any chance of her taking on a substantial role. In brighter news, we have just received a few character descriptions for the SHIELD series, which provide clues as to the various archetypes ABC and Marvel are seeking out for the show.
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Longtime Wes Anderson collaborator Bill Murray has joined the cast of the director’s next movie The Grand Budapest Hotel. Along with Murray’s casting, Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote) has confirmed she has a small role to play in the film.
Murray and Lansbury are joining a cast that already includes Owen Wilson and Jude Law. At one point Johnny Depp was rumored to be up for a part, but that rumor was quickly squashed by Anderson.
Murray confirmed his involvement in an interview with Vulture, in which he revealed he was “about to go shoot a movie with Wes Anderson in Germany.” Lansbury, on the other hand, says she has a “minuscule role” in the film, and is only “on the screen probably for less than five minutes.”
Not much is known about The Grand Budapest Hotel – which is said to draw on Anderson’s time spent in Paris each year — but the Moonrise Kingdom director has teased that it will be less family friendly than his past two films.
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Ben Whishaw (Perfume) is reportedly on director Steven Spielberg’s wish list for a supporting role in Robopocalypse.
Variety reports that Spielberg is looking to cast Whishaw in the role of a hacker named Lurker. Whishaw – who can be seen later this year in both Skyfall and Cloud Atlas – joins a growing list of rumored actors includes Chris Hemsworth and Anne Hathaway.
Based on the novel by David H. Wilson, Robopocalypse tells the story of a robot uprising in the near future. Here’s the novel’s synopsis:
Not far into our future, the dazzling technology that runs our world turns against us. Controlled by a childlike—yet massively powerful—artificial intelligence known as Archos, the global network of machines on which our world has grown dependent suddenly becomes an implacable, deadly foe. At Zero Hour—the moment the robots attack—the human race is almost annihilated, but as its scattered remnants regroup, humanity for the first time unites in a determined effort to fight back.
