Christina Applegate is making a new Netflix show with her old Anchorman buddies

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.

News! We’ve got it, you want it, and thus the classic transaction—laboriously hand-crafted words in exchange for precious eyeball time—is once again invoked. Today we’ve got all sorts of fresh casting info, including the TV return of Christina Applegate, so let’s hop right into the pit.

  • First up: THR reports that Applegate—whose last regular TV gig was NBC’s short-lived Up All Night—is getting back into the game with help from her old Anchorman pals Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, who’ll serve as executive producers on her new Netflix series, Dead To Me. The series will star Applegate as “a tightly wound widow, Jen,” who makes friends with “a free spirit with a shocking secret.” (Going off of the title, the generally death-y vibe, and the potential for a good “free spirit” pun, we have to assume they’re talking about a guh-guh-guh-guh-ghost.)
  • Keri Russell continues to line up high-profile new parts for herself; fresh off of the end of The Americans—and her recent attachment to Star Wars: Episode IX—Russell is also in talks to star in the Guillermo del Toro-produced Antlers. Directed by Scott Cooper, the film would star Russell as a teacher who takes an interest in one of her students, a quiet kid with a potentially deadly secret. [via Vulture]
  • LeBron James is going Hollywood (in a way separate from the much more significant way he already went Hollywood earlier this month), with Vulture reporting that he’s in talks to star in a new comedy film from the screenwriter of The Boss. James previously stretched his comedy chops in Trainwreck; he also served as a producer on Starz’s Survivor’s Remorse, partially based on his own life, and is still threatening to star in that Space Jam sequel.
  • Rising star Anya Taylor-Joy (Thoroughbreds, The Witch) has lined up her next project, with Deadline noting that Taylor-Joy will play the title character of the upcoming “neon-lit fairy tale” Weetzie Bat. Based on Francesca Lia Block’s YA novel of the same name, the film stars Taylor-Joy as an “ethereal pixie” living in a super-stylized version of ’80s L.A. Block’s books are frequently held up as cult favorites, invoking as they do a mixture of high-pitch magical realism and the actual issues of the day.
  • Netflix continues its push into international interests, announcing that it’s acquired its latest Argentinian-focused TV show, Puerta 7. Created by Ozark and Narcos writer Martin Zimmerman, the series centers on the country’s infamous “barra bravas,” groups of football fans who blur the line between rowdy cheerleaders and members of an organized crime syndicate. The series will reportedly explore multiple points of view in the barra brava world. [via Variety]
  • Quentin Tarantino continues to suck as many performers as humanly possible into his latest film, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, with SlashFilm unleashing yet another list of the recently cast. The biggest name this time: Prolific character actor James Remar, who previously appeared in Tarantino’s Django Unchained (along with pretty much everything, ever, over the last 30 years).
  • Netflix has picked up a new project from author Liane Moriarty, whose Big Little Lies was such a huge hit for HBO last year. Per The Wrap, the streaming service has started production on a TV adaptation of Moriarty’s Three Wishes. Her first published novel, the book focuses on the lives of three triplets attempting to navigate around scandals, dark secrets, and sudden tragedies.
  • Finally, Collider has a new series of images from the upcoming fourth season of Better Call Saul. Unsurprisingly, they’re mostly concerned with watching Jimmy McGill try to bullshit people (or look sad, presumably in the aftermath of last year’s finale), but we also get shots of Gus Fring and The Cousins, all looking ominous as Hell.

 
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