News Shotgun 4/26/25
Here’s all the movie and TV news you need to know from the past week, it’s the News Shotgun.
Greyhound sequel starts shooting in 2026: The sequel to Tom Hanks’s AppleTV+ movie Greyhound will begin in Sydney, Australia, next year. Hanks will return as Navy Captain Krause, and he and his crew will be involved in significant World War II events like D-Day and the war in the Pacific. Hanks wrote the script, and director Aaron Schneider returns to direct.
Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping casting: The next chapter in the Hunger Games franchise has found several key cast members this past week. Joseph Zada will play the younger Haymitch Abernathy, who Woody Harrelson played in the original quadrilogy, and Whitney Peak will play Haymitch’s girlfriend Lenore David Baird. McKenna Grace was also cast as Maysilee Donner, the other District 12 tribute who joins Haymitch in the arena. Jesse Plemons is playing the younger Plutarch Heavensbee, played previously by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Sunrise on the Reaping, the novel, was written by series creator Suzanne Collins and tells the story of the Second Quarter Quell, where Haymitch became the first victor of The Hunger Games for District 12.
Split Fiction movie in development: The recent hit game from Hazelight Studios, Split Fiction, is getting a movie adaptation with Wicked director Jon M. Chu directing and Sydney Sweeney starring. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who most recently wrote Deadpool & Wolverine, are writing the film. The game follows two fiction writers, Mio and Zoe, who become trapped between the fantasy and sci-fi worlds they’ve created and have to team up to find a way out.
Michael Bay and Sydney Sweeney are producing an Outrun movie: Weirdly, in other Sydney Sweeney video game adaptation news, she and Michael Bay are teaming up to produce a movie adaptation of the Sega classic Outrun. Bay is also directing the movie, but it seems that Sweeney will not star in it at the current time. The original game was an arcade racing game in which the player drove a sweet Ferrari Testarossa convertible cross-country, trying to reach checkpoints before time ran out. Universal is the studio behind the film.
Royal Pains reboot in the works: One of the staples of the USA “blue sky” era, Royal Pains, is returning on NBC. Mark Feuerstein is back as Dr. Hank Lawson, who found a lucrative career as a “concierge doctor” for the wealthy in the Hamptons after being fired from his job as an ER doctor in New York City. The original series ran for eight seasons, and the new show will pick up several years after the original series finale. It’s unclear if any of the original cast, including Paulo Costanzo, Reshma Shetty, Jill Flint, Campbell Scott, and Brooke D’Orsay, will return. This is the second “blue sky” era series to find new life on NBC as the Suits spin-off, Suits: LA, debuted this season on the network.
The Mortuary Assistant movie finds stars: The adaptation of the Darkstone Digital and DreadXP video game, The Mortuary Assistant, has found its stars, with Willa Holland and Paul Sparks co-starring. Holland plays Rebecca Owens, a recent graduate in mortuary sciences who takes a night shift job at River Fields Mortuary. While things are fairly routine at first, darker, more supernatural events start happening. Sparks plays Raymond Delver, Rebecca’s mysterious boss at the mortuary. Jeremiah Kipp is directing the movie.
New adaptation of Herbert West: Reanimator in development: The classic H.P. Lovecraft story “Herbert West: Reanimator” is getting a new adaptation from the team behind The Haunting in Connecticut. Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe wrote that film and are writing this new contemporary take on the story. The original story was published in the early 1920s, and the most famous adaptation is easily Stuart Gordon’s cult favorite Re-Animator, which starred Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West and spawned a trilogy of movies.
David Leitch signs on to direct Fight: David Leitch, coming off The Fall Guy, has signed on to direct a new action thriller called Fight. Based on a spec script by Nathaniel Halpern, plot details are unknown. Halpern was the creator and showrunner of Amazon’s Tales from the Loop television series.
Andy Serkis finds cast for Animal Farm: Andy Serkis has found the leading voice cast for his adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Seth Rogen, Gaten Matarazzo, Steve Buscemi, Glenn Close, Laverne Cox, Kieran Culkin, Woody Harrelson, Jim Parsons, Kathleen Turner, and Iman Vellani signed on for the animated movie. Nick Stoller adapted the novel for this new version.
Three cast members for the neo-noir action movie Briefcase 8: Mena Suvari, Jeffrey Donovan, and Cam Gigandet have signed on to co-star with James C. Clayton in the upcoming neo-noir action movie Briefcase 8. Clayton also directed the movie, which follows his hitman character, who takes one final job from his boss (Donovan) so he can leave that life with his girlfriend (Suvari). Gigandet plays Clayton’s main foe.
Disney+’s Holes finds main cast members: The new Disney+ series adaptation of Holes has found its main cast with Greg Kinnear, Aidy Bryant, and Shay Rudolph. Rudolph plays Hayley, who is sent to a detention camp where she finds that the teens detained are being forced to dig holes for a mysterious purpose. Kinnear plays the ruthless Warden and Bryant plays Sissy, The Warden’s upbeat right hand. Flor Delis Alicea, Anire Kim Amoda, Noah Cottrell, Iesha Daniels, Sophie Dieterlen, Alexandra Doke, and Maeve Press also appear in the series.
Ready or Not: Here I Come finds new cast members: The sequel to Ready or Not, Ready or Not: Here I Come, has found several new cast members to co-star with the returning Samara Weaving. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Elijah Wood, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, Kevin Durand, and David Cronenberg were all announced to join the cast. Kathryn Newton was also previously cast to co-star with Weaving. It’s not clear what the sequel’s plot will entail. Radio Silence is back to direct the sequel.
