For our latest round-up, we have three casting updates for three different series: Lifetime's Damien, FX's American Horror Story: Hotel, and SundanceTV's Hap and Leonard.
Damien: The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Barbara Hershey (Insidious: Chapter 2, Black Swan, The 9th Life of Louis Drax, Once Upon a Time) has joined the cast of Lifetime's Damien, the sequel series to the 1976 horror film, The Omen, from former The Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara.
Hershey will play "the series regular role of Ann Rutledge, the world's most powerful woman who has been tasked with making sure Damien fulfills his destiny as the Antichrist."
Hershey joins a cast that includes Bradley James as an adult Damien Thorn and Omid Abtahi as Amani Golkar, "a close co-worker of Damien whose loyalty will be tested when he realizes who his brother-in-arms actually is."
The six-episode series is written and executive produced by Mazzara and was ordered straight-to-series by Lifetime back in August, with a premiere expected to air this year. Shekhar Kapur, who has helmed films such as Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, will direct and executive produce the first episode of Damien. Here's the synopsis:
"In the Lifetime series, Damien has grown up and is seemingly unaware of the satanic forces around him. Haunted by his past, Damien must now come to terms with his true destiny — that he is the Antichrist, the most feared man of all time."
Fans of The Omen franchise have seen a matured Damien before: both as a pre-teen in Damien: Omen II and as an adult in 1981's Omen III: The Final Conflict, so it should be interesting to see Mazzara's take on a grown-up Damien in a modern-day setting. We'll keep Daily Dead readers updated on further announcements.
American Horror Story: Hotel: Ryan Murphy tweeted today that Wes Bentley will be a series regular in American Horror Story: Hotel. Bentley joins a growing cast that includes Lady Gaga and Matt Bomer. The fifth season of FX's horror anthology series is expected to debut this fall, and it will be the first season without the talented Jessica Lange in the cast.
Bentley is no stranger to Murphy's series, as he guest-starred in two episodes of American Horror Story: Freak Show as the legendary Edward Mordrake.
Thrilled to announce Wes Bentley will be a series regular on AHS: Hotel.
— Ryan Murphy (@MrRPMurphy) March 17, 2015
Hap and Leonard: Deadline reports that Bill Sage (We Are What We Are, American Psycho) will play Howard in SundanceTV's Hap and Leonard series that's based on the marvelous Hap and Leonard books by Joe R. Lansdale. Readers of the books—which are a brilliant blend of humor, horror, thrills, mystery, martial arts, and much more—will recognize Howard as a key character from the first novel in the series, 1990's Savage Season:
"Sage will play Howard, the ex-husband of Hap’s ex-wife. A master of passive aggression, Howard plays the part of peace-loving hippie leader to a band of misfits and past their sell-by date leftists who recruit our heroes, Hap and Leonard, to help them with a dangerous plan."
Sage joins Michael Kenneth Williams (who many remember as Omar Little from The Wire) in the cast, who will play Leonard Pine,"a black, openly gay Vietnam vet with anger issues. Having been raised by an uncle who shunned him after learning he was homosexual, Leonard was left with Hap — a white, working-class laborer who spent time in federal prison as a young man for refusing to be drafted into the military and serve in the Vietnam War as his only source of support — in the not-so-progressive rural South of the 1980s."
The Hap and Leonard series will be co-written and at least partly directed by Jim Mickle (who co-wrote and directed last year's Cold and July, based on Lansdale's novel of the same name). Nick Damici (Late Phases: Night of the Lone Wolf, Stake Land) lends his pen to the script and both will serve as executive producers. E.L. “Evan” Katz, who directed Cheap Thrills, is also writing and producing the series. Filming on Hap and Leonard begins this year, with Lansdale himself co-executive producing the project. The series is expected to debut in 2016.
For those unfamiliar with Savage Season, here's the synopsis:
"Start with two best friends who practice martial arts in their free time: one a straight white guy, the other a black gay guy. Add a conniving ex-wife in a blue-jean miniskirt. Throw in half a million in a muddy creekbed somewhere near the Sabine River in East Texas. Add an ex-radical from the '60s and two naive idealists who want to save the world. Mix them all together in a half-assed plan, season with double-crosses, and then top it off with a hilarious and chilling drug dealer named Soldier. Bloody mayhem a la Lansdale."
Bill Sage:
Michael Kenneth Williams:
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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