While a whole slew of TV pilots start shooting today, we’ve also got some news on whose been cast in them. As well as some casting news for Deadpool 2 that’ll be exciting for Marvel fans.
So what are you waiting for?
Okay, so when we previously confirmed the dates that Deadpool 2 would be coming to destroy the city (June 19 to September 18), cast members hadn’t been announced yet.
Aside from Vancouver’s Ryan Reynolds, of course.
Since then, there have been a few casting confirmations.
Zazie Beetz (Atlanta) has been cast as Domino, a mutant mercenary who can bend luck in her favour.
Reynolds himself tweeted out the news on March 9:
https://twitter.com/VancityReynolds/status/839947701487796224
Zazie Beetz Effect. pic.twitter.com/Kvtyk1aI7O
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) March 9, 2017
Domino’s partner, the technologically enhanced Cable, has yet to be cast.
Rumours are swirling around who will play Cable, with names like David Arbour (Stranger Things), Russell Crowe (Gladiator), Nathan Fillion (Firefly), Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire), Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights), and Pierce Brosnan (Die Another Day) among them. We’ll have to wait and see who gets picked.
In the meantime, a familiar face will be Brianna Hildebrand reprising her role as the scene-stealing Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
Despite the fact that the character was an obscure figure in Marvel’s comicbook universe, her punk buzzcut, too-cool-for-school apathy, and power-packed mutant abilities made her a hit in the first film.
Her sidekick, powerhouse strongman Colossus, will also be returning, voiced once again by Stefan Kapicic.
Another returning cast member will be Karan Soni (Blunt Talk, Ghostbusters), as the taxi driver Dopinder.
There is one much-beloved mutant who, alas, won’t be making an appearance.
Despite Reynolds’ enthusiasm for Hugh Jackman, also known as Wolverine, to be among the cast for Deadpool 2, Jackman has confirmed he won’t be in it, making his role in the recently released Logan his last outing as the ferocious Canadian X-Man.
So sadly, we won’t be seeing Jackman in Vancouver. Well, for that project anyhow.
Yet, there is another even more powerful mutant who may still be showing up.
Patrick Stewart, who shot the X-Men films in Vancouver, has said he’s open to portraying Professor X in either Deadpool or on the TV series Legion (which shot from August to November of last year). The latter particularly makes sense since Charles Xavier is the father of the mutant known as Legion.
So if Stewart does head here to play Prof X in one of the shows, surely he could make a cameo in the other?
Anyhow, aside from all that X-talk, there are a number of other productions going on in the city, believe it or not.
Actually, there is a production in town with a prominent X in its title that involved psionic abilities but isn’t related to the X-Men.
Production on Season 2 of Mech X4 is coming to an end, wrapping up on Tuesday (March 14).
Directed by local filmmakers Zach Lipovsky (Dead Rising: Watchtower) and Nimisha Mukerji (Blood Relative), the sci-fi adventure series follows a teenage boy (Nathaniel Potvin) with the ability to control technology with his mind.
He awakens a 150-foot robot to fight off giant monsters, and ropes in his brother (Raymond Cham) and two friends (Kamran Lucas and Pearce Joza) to form a team to help save the city.
Elsewhere in the city, there’s a whole bunch of TV pilot starting to film this week.
The sci-fi Reverie starts shooting today (March 13), continuing until March 30.
In the thriller, a human-behaviour specialist and former detective (Sarah Shahi) is brought in when some clients of a virtual-reality program end up in comas after they refuse to return to reality.
The company owner (Jessica Lu) and a dream specialist (Sendhil Ramamurthy) work with a Department of Defense official (Kathryn Morris) and a security chief (Dennis Haysbert) to save the program.
The thriller-drama Doomsday also starts filming today (March 13) and continues until March 31.
The show will follow a U.S. government secret think tank who is assigned to devise solutions to various possible disasters that they can think up. Due to the potential danger of the ideas, the program is shut down. However, when a catastrophe occurs that is straight from their work, the team is reunited to stop an imminent attack.
Claire Holt (The Vampire Diaries) will play the lead, a cyber-security analyst and the team’s newest member, Rachelle Lefevre (Twilight film series) will play the deputy director of Homeland Security, Taye Diggs (Murder in the First) will play an engineer and architect, Dan Byrd (Cougar Town) is cast as a professional analyst, and Jack Davenport (Smash) will portray an intellectual playwright and screenwriter.
A third TV pilot, The Trustee also starts shooting today but continues a bit longer than the others, wrapping up on April 4.
This female buddy cop show, produced by Elizabeth Banks, stars Meaghan Rath (Being Human) as Eliza Radley, a tough detective who receives help from her precinct’s trustee (Orange is the New Black’s Laverne Cox), who is an ex-con finishing her prison sentence by working for the police department.
Lance Gross (Sleepy Hollow) will play a police detective dating Radley while Michael Cudlitz (The Walking Dead) plays a police captain, who has come to respect Radley’s untraditional approaches.
Another TV pilot, The Crossing, starts production tomorrow (March 14) and continues until March 31.
The ABC drama focuses on U.S. refugees from 250 years in the future, seeking asylum in a quiet present-day U.S. town.
Steve Zahn (Dallas Buyers Club) will play the local sheriff, Sandrine Holt (MacGyver) plays a federal customs agent who is a former immigrant and searching for her own missing refugee daughter, and Rob Campbell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) will portray a mysterious member of the surviving arrivals.
Although that may seem like a lot of TV pilots, there are actually more coming in the weeks ahead. And plenty of more film and TV productions to talk about, of course.
So for now, we’ll cap things off for this roundup of what’s shooting on the streets of Hollywood North and be sure to check back in with us again when we’ve got more deets to spill.