Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and more casting news this week (2024)

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Jennifer Lawrence, Julianne Moore, Riz Ahmed, and Olivia Colman are just a few of the A-listers landing new projects this week. Among the highlights of the latest casting news include some Beef buzz for season two, Britain’s answer to Glass Onion’s ensemble films in The Thursday Night Murder Club, and the next reunion of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

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As we speak, Jennifer Lawrence’s is probably conjuring up her own, iconic Real Housewives intro. The No Hard Feelings star is set to produce and lead The Wives for A24 and Apple Original Films, a murder mystery that The Hollywood Reporter describes as “partly inspired by the Real Housewives franchise.” Not much else is known about the Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley penned project as of this writing, but just that description alone is enough to get us in seats. [Emma Keates]

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Comedy Central is working on an animated remake of their 2000 live-action comedy Everybody Hates Chris, and, well, it sounds like the same people still really hate Chris. Chris Rock is set to reprise his original role (in voice only), where he’ll be joined by the vocal talents of Terry Crews and Tichina Arnold, who played his parents in the original series. Tim Johnson Jr., Ozioma Akagha, Terrence Little Gardenhigh and Gunnar Sizemore are also joining the cast. [Emma Keates]

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Jason Patric joined the cast of Terrifier 3—apparently some time ago, as the film wrapped filming in New York earlier in June, reports Deadline. Patric’s role is still undisclosed, but if the previous Terrifier films are any indication, there’s a non-zero chance of him being carved up in a fashion so gruesome seeing only gifs and fanedits on Twitter will be enough to cause nightmares (in this writer’s experience). [Drew Gillis]

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The 2021 documentary The Lost Leonardo is getting the prestige series treatment. Julianne Moore will star as Dianne Modestini, an art restorer who bought a decaying Da Vinci for $1000 in an estate sale and restored it into a $450 million payday, per Deadline. Moore, on the heels of another historical series with Mary and George, will also executive produce the series. [Drew Gillis]

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Bottoms breakout Havana Rose Liu has found her next role in Power Ballad, an upcoming musical-comedy that will also star Nick Jonas, Jack Reynor and Paul Rudd. Plot details are vague at this point, but the film is said, per Deadline, to follow “a wedding singer, a rock star, and the song that comes between them.” A tale as old as time… [Drew Gillis]

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Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow has found two more actors for her upcoming Netflix production. Gabriel Basso (who portrayed J.D. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy) and Jared Harris (Mad Men’s Lane Pryce) join Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson in the film, whose title and plot details are still being kept private. That said, an unnamed source told Deadline that it follows some kind of national crisis through the POV of the White House. [Drew Gillis]

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Recurring This Is Us actor Milana Vayntrub will star beside two 2024 Oscar nominees—Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller—in Project Hail Mary, reports Deadline. Based on Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, Ryland Grace (the coincidentally similarly named Gosling) wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there, but nevertheless must save the galaxy. Vayntrub’s role has not yet been disclosed. [Drew Gillis]

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Tatiana Maslany has found yet another role in The Nightbeast, a new pilot she will shoot for Amazon MGM Studios. The plot sure sounds like an intriguing one, seemingly blending The Idea Of You and The Babadook. Per Deadline, Maslany will portray a suburban mom who begins an affair with the boogeyman in her child’s closet—The Nightbeast. Believe it is not, this is not the same premise as Lily James’ upcoming Bumble movie. [Drew Gillis]

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Dexter’s Jennifer Carpenter is joining the Sheridan-verse. The actor was just cast in season two of 1923, one of Taylor Sheridan’s multiple Yellowstone spinoffs. She’ll play Mamie Fossett, a “highly capable U.S. Deputy Marshall who serves warrants and makes arrests with confidence ahead of her time” (via Deadline). 1923 follows an earlier generation of the Dutton family, through a time of pandemic, drought, and the early stages of the Great Depression. Season one starred Helen Mirren, Harrison Ford, Brandon Sklenar, Aminah Nieves, Brian Geraghty, Sebastian Roche, Jennifer Ehle, Marley Shelton, and Robert Patrick. [Emma Keates]

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The Thursday Murder Club is really on a quest to secure all of the U.K.’s finest. The Chris Columbus film is adding David Tennant (Doctor Who), Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes), Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice), Daniel Mays (Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget), and Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Killing Eve) to its buzzy cast, which already included Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie. Per Deadline, the crime comedy will follow “a group of friends in a retirement home who gather to solve murders for fun, but find themselves caught in a real case.” The film is based on Richard Osman’s novel of the same name. “I think this is the greatest British cast assembled since the [Harry Potter] movies,” the author said in an interview. [Emma Keates]

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Sony is looking to cash in on the massive success of Will Smith’s Bad Boys: Ride Or Die with a new Smith-led action picture, Resistor. The film is based on Daniel Suarez’s novel, Influx, which follows a team of scientists who discover a device that can reflect gravity, an advancement that has huge implications for the field of physics and the world at large. However, instead of acclaim, they find themselves locked down by an organization called Bureau of Technology Control. [Emma Keates]

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Purple Hearts’ Sofia Carson and Queen Charlotte’s Corey Mylchreest are going to college. The two young stars have been cast in Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of Julia Whelan’s novel, My Oxford Year. According to Deadline, the novel follows Anna, “an ambitious young American woman who, after setting out for Oxford University to fulfill a childhood dream, has her life completely on track until she meets a charming and clever local who profoundly alters both of their lives.” [Emma Keates]

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Matt Bomer and Nathan Lane have been cast in Mid-Century Modern, a new multi-camera sitcom created by Will & Grace’s Max Mutchnick and David Kohan. Linda Lavin (Alice) has also been cast as Lane’s character’s mother. Per the Hulu series’ official—lengthy—description (via Variety): “The series follows three best friends—gay gentlemen of a certain age—who, after an unexpected death, decide to spend their golden years living together in Palm Springs where the wealthiest one lives with his mother and a naked Gen Z housekeeper. Mid-Century Modern stars Nathan Lane as Bunny Schneiderman, Matt Bomer as Jerry Frank, and Linda Lavin as Sybil Schneiderman, Bunny’s mother. A successful businessman with one foot in retirement, Bunny is forever in search of love, but he first has to be convinced he’s worthy of it. Like her son, Sybil’s strengths are her weaknesses: wise, caring, and iconoclastic – which sometimes means she’s critical, smothering and amoral. Jerry left the Mormon Church and his marriage in his early 20s after his wife informed him and the rest of the congregation that he was a hom*osexual. Now a latter-day saint in the literal sense of the term, Jerry is pure of heart. He is also hard of body and soft of head. ” [Emma Keates]

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Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are starring in another movie together, which could mean nothing. The longtime collaborators are set to co-headline RIP, a new crime thriller from director Joe Carnahan. Damon and Affleck are also producing under their Artists Equity banner, which so far has produced their 2022 collaboration, Air, as well as Small Things Like These and a documentary called The Greatest Love Story Never Told. [Emma Keates]

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Olivia Colman is officially reprising her Emmy-nominated role as intelligence officer Angela Burr in season two of The Night Manager. She’ll be joined by other returning cast members Tom Hiddleston, Alistair Petrie (Sex Education), Douglas Hodge (Black Mirror), Michael Nardone (Rome), and Noah Jupe (A Quiet Place). Also joining them for the second round are Diego Calva (Babylon), Camila Morrone (Daisy Jones & The Six), Indira Varma (Game of Thrones), Paul Chahidi (The Serpent Queen), and Hayley Squires (Beau Is Afraid). Plot details are currently being kept under wraps, but season two will be set eight years after the events of the season one finale. [Emma Keates]

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Jesse Lee Soffer is putting on another uniform for Dick Wolf, but it won’t be the same one as last time. While Soffer previously played former Intelligence Unit member Jay Halstead on Chicago P.D., he’ll be returning to the Wolf-iverse as a new, to-be-named character in season 4 of CBS’ FBI: International. [Emma Keates]

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Paul Walter Hauser has officially taken Sydney Sweeny’s place as the most booked actor in Hollywood. He’s now set to star opposite Mark Wahlberg in Balls Up, an action comedy from director Peter Farrelly (There’s Someting About Mary, Dumb And Dumber). According to Deadline, the film follows “two American marketing executives who are fired for blowing a client sponsorship opportunity and decide to use their free tickets to a major soccer match. Their drunken debauchery leads them to be hunted by every person across the country.” [Emma Keates]

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What was that about cancel culture, again? Mere months after his domestic violence conviction, Jonathan Majors is going back to the big screen. The former Marvel actor landed his first role since the trial in Merciless (feels a little on the nose, huh?), a revenge thriller from Martin Villeneuve, the younger brother of Dune’s Denis Villeneuve. Per Deadline, Merciless is about “a top CIA interrogator who, after the woman he loves is overtaken by a malevolent force, is forced to go even darker to defeat it.” Hopefully, this isn’t the start of a greater trend. [Emma Keates]

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Peaco*ck is turning its acclaimed John Wayne Gacy docuseries Devil In Disguise into a TV show because why not? What’s another true-crime drama going to do in this current landscape? Anyway, Deadline reveals that Severance’s Michael Chernus is essaying the role of one of Chicago’s notorious serial killers. Much like the source material, the series chronicles his crimes and the investigation that took him down. [Saloni Gajjar]

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Jeremy Allen White is all set to terrorize Odessa Young with his big blue eyes next. The actor joins The Bear star in his upcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere, per Deadline. She’s mostly playing his love interest so get the shipper in you ready. The film, which follows the making of Springsteen’s iconic album Nebraska, also stars Paul Walter Hauser. [Saloni Gajjar]

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Beef-mania swept the Emmys last year and for good reason. The first season, led by Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, took everyone by surprise and has now extended its run from limited series to anthology. It means the upcoming season will have a brand-new cast. Initially, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway were rumored to star in it, but according to Deadline, the current contenders are Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan. The new season is rumored to be about a feud between two couples, with Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny in talks to play the other two leads. A lot of big names are being thrown around, so we hope this project comes to fruition at some point. [Saloni Gajjar]

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Okay, it’s not exactly Yellowstone, but Netflix is aspiring to make the next big drama set in a national park. Enter Untamed, which follows Kyle Turner (Eric Bana), a National Parks Service agent whose investigation into a brutal death uncovers dark secrets of the location. Per Deadline, Sam Neill has joined the series as Paul Souter, the chief ranger at Yosemite who is friends with Kyle and is confident in his job. [Saloni Gajjar]

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After winning an Emmy for HBO’s The Night Of in 2017, Riz Ahmed has stayed away from leading another TV show. He was busy earning an Oscar nomination for the fantastic Sound Of Metal and being a Venom villain instead. Thankfully, he’s returning to the small screen via Prime Video’s new half-hour comedy. He’ll star in, produce, and write a show about a struggling actor on the cusp of achieving all his dreams until he’s thrust into a conspiracy theory. [Saloni Gajjar]

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Grey’s Anatomy hasn’t turned Patrick Dempsey completely away from TV it seems. (And in his defense, he did reprise playing Dr. Derek Shepherd in the show’s 17th season for a few episodes). But he’s taking on a new challenge in the form of Dexter’s prequel, Original Sin. The actor is set to play a Miami PD homicide captain named Aaron Spencer. This Dexter spin-off is set in 1991 and charts how Dexter Morgan (Patrick Gibson) turned into the avenging serial killer we see in the original series. [Saloni Gajjar]

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Anthony Carrigan, best known for his breakout role as NoHo Hank in HBO’s Barry, has lined up his next big TV role: An antagonistic position in the second season of Peaco*ck’s very odd comedy-action video game adaptation Twisted Metal. Carrigan will play Calypso, the creator of the show’s titular destruction derby, who was alluded to heavily in the show’s first season. The character is a big part of the original games, where he’s a sort of giddily evil wish-granting devil. (Feels like it’s in Carrigan’s wheelhouse.) The Barry star joins a cast that includes Anthony Mackie, Stephanie Beatriz, Neve Campbell, and Will Arnett. [William Hughes]