The blonde spitfire is getting another crack at the bat. Also today: more TV roles have been filled, from Hung to human computers, and Quentin might make a Western while Tim might make a Hunchback.

  • What a rollercoaster of a career it has been for Jaime Pressly. She was popular-ish in the late-'90s, doing movies like Can't Hardly Wait and Ringmaster and doing a season or two of that WB show Jack & Jill. Then she kind of disappeared for a while, wandering around in Not Another Teen Movie and the BAFTA-winning costume drama Demon Island. But then came My Name Is Earl, and though she played trashy, she finally earned respect, and even an Emmy award! She'd made it. Until Earl got canceled and then a little while later a DUI arrest was splashed all over gossip sites and there was something about her owing $600,000 in back taxes and things were not looking bright. But now! Now she's been cast as one of the leads on the new Fox pilot I Hate My Teenage Daughter. And though she is only 34 years old and it's kind of distressing to think about her having a teenage kid, it's still good news. Sure it's only a pilot, might not even make it to air, but you know what they say: work breeds work. So maybe ol' Pressly's still got some gas left in her. I hope so. She's one of those actors I've been oddly rooting for for a while now. Not watching everything she's in, but just content to know she's working. You know? Like Sela Ward or Laura Leighton. It's just nice to know that Hollywood isn't completely littered with the shards of shattered dreams. Just mostly. [Deadline]
  • Hm. Josh Brolin and Tim Burton are apparently teaming up to bring us a live-action big screen version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a story about how everyone who goes to Notre Dame is ugly. (Go Eagles!) No, you know what it's about, France and weirdos and inner beauty and stuff. Brolin would produce and also star as Quasimodo, which is actually pretty good casting! I mean obviously Michael Shannon would be the best choice, but Brolin is basically the rich man's Michael Shannon, features-wise, so this works too. The project would likely be a ways away, as Burton still has to, y'know, make that whole Dark Shadows movie, but a script has been commissioned, so some gears are turning. Might Helena Bonham Carter play Esmeralda? Nah, probably not. If they could get her, I'd say Penelope Cruz could work. Just not Demi Moore, plz. [THR]
  • OK, it's still that time of year, so let's do a rundown of television castings. Leven Rambin, sister of former Julia Allison lackey Mary, has been cast on Hung as a love interest for Ray, and this bottle of juice has been cast as a rival gigolo. [Deadline] Lovely and talented British theater and film actress Janet McTeer has signed on to a Fox pilot about psychiatrists working the weekend shift at Bellevue. Hip actress/writer Zoe Lister-Jones (Delocated, Breaking Upwards) has been cast on the pilot being developed for the decidedly unhip Whitney Cummings (well maybe she's hip, but I just don't get her). [Deadline] Poppy Montgomery, who was kind of a big deal back when she was on Without a Trace a while ago, has taken the lead in a new CBS pilot about a lady detective who can remember everything. Based on this lady, presumably. Except that lady isn't a detective. No one is, in real life. [Deadline]
  • Moving back to the movies, blonde windsock Malin Akerman has been cast alongside box office gold Nicolas Cage in Medallion. She'll play a former thief who teams up with her ex-boyfriend, Cage, also a former thief, to find his daughter who has been kidnapped and put in the back of a New York taxicab. Hence the title Medallion. We've got a winner right here. Chicken dinner. [THR]
  • Well you've probably already heard all about this Dancing With the Stars news, but just in case: the new cast of DWTS XII was announced last night and it is bleak. How bleak? Like Kirstie Alley is the biggest star bleak. Or, I guess, Wendy Williams? Ralph Macchio? It's hard to tell really. The point is no one is terribly interesting. I guess the one saving grace of the whole thing is I don't watch Dancing With the Stars, never have, and find its immense success to be so baffling and at times annoying that it makes my head feel hot. I've ranted about it before, but good lord if I have to hear people talking about "paso doble" one more time outside the confines of a dance studio I might wink out of existence from sheer fury. Harsh words. But true ones too. [EW]
  • Uh oh. Quentin Tarantino has orally confirmed that his next movie could be a Western. That's not that surprising really, and not bad at all, it's not what the "uh oh" is about. The "uh oh" is that I'm beginning to fear my suspicions (and those of others) that a Western genre revival is in the offing might be correct. While I personally like my idea for Verona, Arizona, a lot of these Westerns could be pretty bad and all trying-to-be-cool-like. Things like Alex Pettyfer in The Blood of Dawn, about a cocky young gunfighter who must duel his way across the West in search of his kidnapped brother and sister. Or Kristen Stewart as a disaffected saloon girl who aims to get revenge, but finds love instead, in Red Bullet. I mean, yes, these could all be fun, but they could all be baaad too. (But seriously, if you are a big Hollywood exec, let's talk Verona, Arizona, OK?) [Deadline]

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