The brainiac renegade from Southern royalty is back in a big(ish) leading role. Also today: lots of TV pilot casting news, as it is the season for that, plus a rumor about the upcoming Superman movie that will have you banging a tin cup on the table in excitement.

  • Remember Ashley Judd? She was in Double Jeopardy, that movie about how you can kill someone legally if you've already been convicted of killing them. (Which, as it turns out, isn't true — you'd have to kill them the second time at the same exact time and place as the first supposed killing.) It was a big hit so then she was in more movies, things like Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Someone Like You, and High Crimes. Not exactly a legend's oeuvre. But she was appealing and showed range a little later in smaller movies like Bug and Come Early Morning. Then she disappeared for a while, doing lots of charitable work and enrolling at Harvard to get an MPA. (Good for her!) Well, now she's back. She's signed on to star in an ABC pilot called Missing, which is basically the plot of Taken with the genders reversed. A former CIA agent's teenage son goes missing in Italy, so she sets out across Europe to find him. A network series set entirely in Europe?? Crazy! But, good for Ashley Judd. I've missed her! Have you? [Deadline]
  • Draco Malfoy's creepy dad Lucius is, yes, having steamy sex with Harry and the gang in the pages of online fanfic, yes that's true he is doing that, but he is ALSO starring in a new TV pilot! Or at least actor Jason Isaacs, who was also on Showtime's Brotherhood, is. He's signed on to play the lead in the NBC pilot REM, about being bald in Athens, GA a policeman stuck in two alternate realities. Or something along those lines. Hopefully filming will be fast and he can get back to The Burrow quickly, otherwise Snape might swoop in and— Oh. Oops. Yup, he's uh... He's already swooped... in. Oh well. Stay away from the slash fiction, kids. Promise me. [THR]
  • Uh oh! Watch out, Metropolis! You're about to get Costner'd. Yes, it's rumored that Kevin Costner is in talks to take a role in the new Superman movie. We don't know what kind of Costerning their fair city is going to get, whether it'll be the paranoid truth digger Costner of JFK, the amble-shamble easygoing Costner of Bull Durham, or the crazy windblown Costner of Waterworld or The Postman. Given that it's a Superman movie, I'm going to guess it's closest to the third option. Which is scary! But kind of fun, too. [Deadline]
  • Some news from a tabloid! It is being reported that troubled cocaine-wraith Lindsay Lohan has taken her most recent first post-rehab movie role. Supposedly it's in a film called Escaping the Game, which is about celebrities who can't handle fame so they run away to a remote island to live in peace. Aw, man. That is sad. Lindsay Lohan playing make believe, wishing she really was on an island where no one knew her, where the only buzzes and clicks are those of crabs and insects, not of cameras. How melancholy. People are nothing more than bones and dreams, indeed. Anyway, I hope she enjoys filming the movie. She's earned it? [Radar]
  • More pilot news! Patrick Wilson, most famous for one time having sex in a flying owl mobile (OK, he is more famous for other things, but he really did have sex in an owl-copter, in a movie anyway), has taken a lead on a television show. He'll star in a drama pilot from Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich, In Her Shoes) about a doctor whose wife dies but then comes back from the grave to help him be a better doctor. Aha. So it's like if The Funky Phantom had been about medicine instead of solving mysteries. And if one of the teens had been married to Mudsy Muddlemore before he died. Actually, why don't they just make that show? Wilson can play Mudsy, get some Disney teen to play Augie Anderson, and you're gold! [Deadline] Also from the pilot deck: theater actor Stark Sands has been cast alongside Leelee Sobieski (star of The Curious Case of Helen Hunt) in a police drama called Rookies. Oh boring, bad, boo, another police drama about new cops, you think. But! The show is from Richard Price, who knows his way around a police story. Lush Life alone is ample proof of that. So it could maybe be good? The Sobieski thing has me worried though. [Deadline]

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