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For those of you who don’t know, my fellow Entertainment Editor, Hannah Lodge and I, along with Beat Contributors Harper Harris and Cal Cleary, host a mostly-weekly podcast together for our site, GeekRex (where we also write-up comic and movie reviews, along with the rare television and game piece). For the latest episode, Heidi has been […]

Happy Monday everyone! Hannah and I took today off from our regular gigs, but I didn’t want a few of the more interesting headlines to pass us by…so, let’s take a look at what’s causing a buzz in the entertainment side of things.

– According to TVInsider, Jamie Alexander is returning to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. reprising her role as Lady Sif from the Thor films and her guest appearance in the first season of the ABC series. Alexander will guest star in the second episode of the midseason, where Lady Sif will be struck by amnesia after a massive battle with a yet to be revealed villain. Though executive producer Jeffrey Bell states that the memories that she hangs onto will prove very important in the on-going Inhuman-based subplots of the series.

– Over the weekend, OK! Magazine (via SpoilerTV) reported a rumor that Angelina Jolie (Unbroken, In the Land of Blood and Honey) was offered $20 million dollars by Marvel Studios to direct their upcoming Captain Marvel feature. This rumor caused a bit of a stir online, but let’s face facts, Marvel has yet to offer any director that kind of payday and it’s hard to imagine they’d start doing that now ($20 million dollars was Christopher Nolan‘s take for Interstellar for example). Most sources I’ve spoken with in trying to follow up on this report state that the rumor is fiction. The one thing it gets right is that Marvel is likely looking to hire a female filmmaker for the property, and that is a very exciting prospect.

– Another unsourced story (from Cinelinx) floated around yesterday that NBC/Universal, in the wake of not renewing Constantine for a second season, would be moving it to SyFy and renaming the series Hellblazer. It’s a great idea, yet I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Sadly, barring a sudden surprise renewal announcement, the upcoming finale is likely the last you’ll seen of John and company.

– Production on X-Men: Apocalypse continues, and Bryan Singer, ever the busy tweeter/Instagrammer, has posted a photo of interest:

I know. Old door. But there’ll be something new behind it. #XmenApocalypse

A photo posted by Bryan Singer (@bryanjaysinger) on Feb 9, 2015 at 9:59am PST

It sounds like the Danger Room is returning if I were to hazard a guess.

Per DC’s blog, Gotham is adding another name familiar to fans of genre material, as former Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia will be joining the series as an original character named Jason Lennon aka “The Ogre”.

Here’s how he’s described:

…a serial killer who has been preying on the young women of Gotham for nearly a decade, luring them into his web and confronting them with a series of “tests” as he searches for his perfect mate. When the women fail to live up to his impossible standard, Lennon disposes of them quickly and viciously.

According to the report, Ventimiglia is joining the series for a multi-episode arc starting in Episode 19 and will be pit in what sounds like a “cat and mouse” game between his character and Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie).

More original characters like this seem to make greater sense for the series’ trajectory, which is introducing Batman’s Rogues Gallery in various forms while Bruce hasn’t even hit his teens yet. Hopefully we’re seeing the start of a trend.

It looks like we’re inching ever closer to having that Brandon Routh-led Atom spin-off that The CW keeps hinting at.

After a few weeks of teasing, the network has released the first image of Routh in full Atom regalia.

He looks a lot like X-O Manowar to me, which I find quite awesome, but I love how X-O looks. What do you think?

There’s been little word regarding the upcoming Teen Titans based television series on TNT since it was announced a few months back. The only aspect we knew for sure was that Nightwing would be the leader.

Now according to The Nerdist, who received casting information for the pilot, this is the line-up that will grace the first episode:

Nightwing

Oracle

Hawk and Dove

Raven

Starfire

While all of these characters have appeared in animated form in some aspect or another, only Oracle has shown up in live action before (in WB’s short-lived Birds of Prey), though of course Dick Grayson has been represented multiple times as Robin in various media.

According to the report, Hawk and Dove will be based on their New 52 iterations and are a romantic pairing. Also, the pilot script never actually refers to Barbara as Oracle, though she serves as the “computer hacker” of the team.

The lack of Beast Boy/Changeling and Cyborg may surprise some, though with the upcoming film already scheduled for the latter and his participation in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Vic Stone has surely graduated to the big squad on a permanent basis.

It’s very likely that TNT’s Titans will air sometime before the end of 2015.

When Melissa Benoist was cast as Supergirl last week for the CBS upcoming superhero drama of the same name, I had a feeling the Jimmy Olsen announcement could only be a few days away, given that the auditions for both roles were held pretty closely together.

Like magic, we now have a new Jimmy Olsen! Mehcad Brooks (Desperate Housewives, True Blood) will be playing everyone’s favorite Daily Planet photographer/giant turtle-based superhero. Actually, the latter probably won’t happen sadly, but Brooks will surely have a camera in hand at some point.

The Supergirl iteration of Jimmy is described as “a smart worldly photographer for CatCo, the media company where Kara works. He had previously been working and living in National City for mysterious reasons, and his salt of the earth nature piques Kara’s interest”.

I’m not totally up on my Supergirl lore, but National City doesn’t ring any of my DC Comics bells (other than being the former name of the company). I assume its something created specifically for the new series.

There are a number of roles still to be cast, including: Cat Grant, Hank Henshaw – the Supergirl obsessed director of the Department of Extra-normal Operations, Kara’s CatCo colleague Wynn Schott, and Kara’s sister Alex.

CBS has found the lead of their first superhero adaptation since The Flash debuted in 1990.

Melissa Benoist, who appeared most recently in the indie hit Whiplash, has been tapped for the role of Kara Zor-El in Supergirl, making her the third live action version of the character, following Helen Slater (Supergirl) and Laura Vandervoort (Smallville).

The hour-long drama, which does not yet have a series order, centers on a 24 year old version of Kara. After growing up with the Danvers family, who taught her to be careful in the use of her powers, she’s faced with an unexpected disaster that forces her to use those abilities in public. Kara begins to help the people of her city and thus is given the name “Supergirl”.

The pilot episode will be written by Greg Berlanti (The Flash, Arrow) and Ali Adler (The New Normal).

Benoist is also known for her role on the Fox series Glee, the same series that brought Grant Gustin (star of the current iteration of The Flash) to prominence.

Supergirl finally gets CBS into the superhero game, as ABC (Agents of S.H.I.E..L.D., Agent Carter), NBC (Constantine), and FOX (Gotham) have all already debuted their comics-based series.

A Jimmy Olsen casting announcement, a character known to be a major part of Supergirl, will be announced imminently.

When Gotham kicked off last year, the show began with a number of proto-versions of Batman’s Rogues gallery such as The Riddler, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and of course The Penguin (who, played by Robin Lord Taylor, has sort of worked his way into MVP status on the show according to its fans, along with Jada Pinkett Smith’s Fish Mooney).

Just a few episodes into its run, and rumors were already flying around regarding the Joker possibly appearing, either through red herrings in every episode, or even the wild theory that Oswald Cobblepot was actually the Joker.

Today, Executive Producer Bruno Heller has revealed that The Red Hood is coming to Gotham, and as we know, where that hood usually goes…the Joker is soon to follow.

From an interview via CBR:

There’s going to be an episode that involves the Red Hood…which picks up that strand, the costume strand, and sort of gives a kind of philosophical base, if that’s not too pretentious a word. Why costumes? What’s the power of costumes? What’s the power of a mask? All of that groundwork will be laid sort of culturally for that side of the DC Universe before we start rolling into the more spectacular spandex type of deal.

With Bruce at his current pre-teen state, who is going to drive The Red Hood into that infamous vat of chemicals? Perhaps this will be the first of the Red Hood gang and the eventual “Joker-to-be” comes later. Or maybe I’m putting more thought into this than Gotham‘s producers probably have. I’d love to be wrong.

It’s not a surprise, given that it was a fairly big ratings success, but FOX has renewed the Batman prequel series Gotham for another season.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the network felt confident in bringing back the Bruno Heller-created series based on its strong performance in the key 18-49 year old demographic, where it pulls a 4.2 rating. Additionally, Gotham draws around an average of 10.6 million viewers per episode. It also ranks as the #1 drama among men in the 18-49 and 18-34 demos.

Also, THR’s report states that Gotham‘s live-plus-seven ratings, which take DVR numbers into account, give it the largest post-three-day ratings boost of any drama ever!

People sure love their Batman! I dropped out after the third episode, but is The Beat readership still enjoying it? Does another year of the series seem like a good prospect?