2 Dope Queens is getting 4 more dope specials at HBO

Welcome to Development Hell, the fiery pit into which we fling recent developments in casting, distribution, and everything else that’s new and mildly interesting in the Boschian phantasmagoria of the entertainment industry.

As summer continues to gently cook the last traces of joy and happiness out of our poor, sun-blighted existence, we have to grab hold of the happy news as it comes. So no screwing around, today; let’s get into it:

• Jessica Williams has announced that podcast-turned-TV special delight 2 Dope Queens will be coming back for another series of specials at HBO, constituting a second season of her and Phoebe Robinson’s charming and hilarious approach to comedy. HBO confirmed the news, including the fact that the new “season” will contain four more hour-long specials, just like the first.
• ABC has set a return date for its Roseanne-free Roseanne spinoff, The Conners. The series will debut fairly late in the fall TV season, on October 16, presumably to give the show’s writers time to put together a new season re-focused on Sara Gilbert’s Darlene. The move will also affect the rest of the network’s Tuesday night schedule, with Black-ish, Splitting Up Together, and new series The Kids Are Alright and The Rookie debuting the same night. [via Variety]
• Page Six reports that a biopic about the life of hard-partying banker Matthew Mellon might be in the works, although the story also notes that his family—less enamored of his sordid reputation than Mellon himself was—might put their foot down on the topic. (Rumors that Johnny Depp expressed interest in playing Mellon—who died earlier this year—probably won’t help on that account.)
• Actor Cameron Boyce—best known for playing Cruella de Vil’s son in Disney’s “All our character had kids and now they all go to school together” TV movie series, The Descendants—has been cast in a new indie film, Runt. Per Deadline, the movie is being directed by William Coakley, and is about a teen kid who ends up being a lot more dangerous and powerful than he initially seems. (No word yet on whether he also wants to turn any dogs he meets into fashionable outerwear.)
• Us poor, lottery-losing plebes might be one step closer to finally getting to see Hamilton after all these years; Variety reports that there’s a quiet bidding war raging right now for a filmed recording of the multiple-Tony winner, filmed back before Lin-Manuel Miranda departed the show. Even so, don’t get your hopes too high; the seller’s stipulations for the rights to the show apparently contain a provision that says it can’t be aired until 2020 or 2021.
• Somebody pass the conch and bully the glasses-wearing fat kid; Netflix has green-lit a new show it’s describing as a hybrid of Lost and Lord Of The Flies. Blockers’ Kathryn Newton will star in the untitled series, about a group of teenagers who return to their hometown from a trip, only to find that the adults have all vanished and that they can no longer leave. [via The Hollywood Reporter]
• Legion star Dan Stevens continues his mission to be in pretty much everything; Variety reports that Stevens has now signed on for the cast of Harrison Ford’s upcoming Jack London adaptation Call Of The Wild. There’s no word yet on which part Stevens will play, but based on the averages, we’ll go with “ostensibly good guy with some undercurrents of menace.”