• Can you believe that there’s another installment of Indiana Jones? I mean, Harrison Ford will probably be doing this forever — earring and all. Nonetheless, the cast for the fifth installment of the 40-year-old iconic film franchise has added Shaunette Renée Wilson to the cast, according to Deadline. You may recognize Wilson from TV’s The Resident and Billions. She was also part of the Dora Milaje in Black Panther — so bow down to the queen.
  • The Hollywood Reporter reports that deep-pockets Netflix picked up the rights to Grace Li’s novel, Portrait of a Thief. The streamer won a competitive bidding war for the rights to the novel ahead of its April 5, 2022 publish date. Li’s book is a “story of friendships, the colonization of art and the complexity of the Chinese American identity.”
  • NBA all-star Kevin Garnett is teaming with Jane the Virgin alum Justin Baldoni are shooting their shot with the coming-of-age sports drama titled Hoop It Up, which is a feature adaptation based on the largest 3×3 basketball tour.
  • Reading Rainbow icon and future Jeopardy! host LeVar Burton is set to lend his voice to the proposed Nancy Drew spinoff Tom Swift. Deadline says Burton has been tapped to voice Barclay, Tom Swift’s (Tian Richards) steadfast AI companion and tough-love mentor. He will make his debut as the character in an upcoming episode of the CW’s Nancy Drew. It will serve as a backdoor pilot for a potential spinoff series, now in development at the network.
  • Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias has lined up another comedy special at Netflix titled The Comedy Event, which will drop on on the streaming giant later this year.
  • Lewis Tan is going from the outlandish, bloody fatalities of Mortal Kombat to romancing Emma Roberts in About Fate. According to Deadline, the rom-com tells a tale of two people who believe in love, but seem to never be able to find its true meaning. In a wild twist of events, fate puts each in the other’s path on a stormy New Year’s Eve and comedy and chaos ensue.
  • Amazon Studios has picked up the original action-adventure spec script Valor from Plus One duo Jeff Chan and Andrew Rhymer. The story follows a warrior from a popular video game that dies in a freak accident. He is reincarnated into our world and discovers the god he’s always worshipped turns out to be a 13-year-old Asian kid from New Jersey adjusting to life with a single parent.
  • Randall Park is set to join Ed Helms as co-hosts in the upcoming series True Story which has recently moved from NBC to Peacock — so it’s staying in the family. Based on Australian format of the same name, the six-episode series is cut from the same cloth as Drunk History and features Park and Helms sitting down with Americans as they share their most extraordinary and unbelievably true stories for the first time.
  • America’s Next Top Model alum Yaya DaCosta has been set as the lead of the forthcoming Fox drama Our Kind Of People after she was announced as one of two original Chicago Med original cast members to depart ahead of its seventh season.
  • The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame has set six inductees for the class of 2021. Formally entering the Hall of Fame are Jay-Z, Tina Turner, Carole King, the Go-Go’s, Todd Rundgren, and Foo Fighters. That said, King and Turner are the second and third women to be inducted twice. Also, two out of the six inductees are Black. Let’s hear it for progress!
  • Neon is done with the Hollywood Foreign Press‘s bullshit and have decided to boycott the Golden Globes.
  • NBCUniversal’s Working Title Television has acquired the rights to Stacey Abrams’ new novel While Justice Sleeps. The company won the rights in a competitive situation (that makes it sound so exciting, right?). The legal thriller was recently published and will be adapted into a TV series.
  • The Sundance Film Festival is coming back — and it’s gonna be a hybrid of sativa and indica….or online and in-person. Anyway, the Park City-based fest is set for January 20-30, 2022.