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Gillian Anderson has signed on to star in Kurt Sutter’s upcoming Netflix Western series “The Abandons,” Variety has learned exclusively.

Anderson joins previously announced star Lena Headey in the show, which was first picked up to series at the streamer in October 2022. According to an individual with knowledge of the situation, Anderson’s deal was in the works prior to the beginning of the writers’ strike but only recently closed.

The official series description states: “As a group of diverse, outlier families pursue their Manifest Destiny in 1850s Oregon, a corrupt force of wealth and power, coveting their land, tries to force them out. These abandoned souls, the kind of lost souls living on the fringe of society, unite their tribes to form a family and fight back. In this bloody process, “justice” is stretched beyond the boundaries of the law.”

Anderson will play Constance, described as “the matriarch...

Oliver Hirschbiegel scored with his World War II final days of Hitler film Downfall, and now he’s eyeing World War I. Arclight Films a deal to rep two Rainmark Films. One is Hirschbiegel’s Wwi drama The Guns Of August, starring Helena Bonham Carter, Charles Dance and Game Of Thrones‘ Emilia Clarke, the other is the comedy drama Woolly Faces, written and directed by Pearse Elliott. Both are being presented to buyers for the first time here in Cannes. Bonham Carter will play her real life step-great grandmother Margot Asquith in an adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning book by historian Barbara W. Tuchman. Scripted by writer-producer Frank Doelger, it is the story of a family dispute with global consequences. It traces the tragic misunderstandings, missed opportunities and aristocratic follies of the summer of 1914, which led to the outbreak of the First World War. It shoots next year. Woolly Faces is...

With only one week to go until the revitalized Hammer brand’s latest slice of terror arrives on DVD, we’ve managed to bag three copies to give away to lucky UK readers. Read on, and get your entry in for a chance to visit Wake Wood.

Directed by David Keating (The Last of the High Kings; KM64: Birth of a Skatepark) from a script by producer Brendan McCarthy (Outcast; Breakfast on Pluto; The Mighty Celt; Omagh), Wake Wood stars BAFTA nominated actors Aidan Gillen ("The Wire"), Eva Birthistle (Middletown; Breakfast on Pluto; Ae Fond Kiss) and Timothy Spall (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; The King’s Speech) in a contemporary story of the occult.

In an attempt to cope with the grief and despair of losing their only child, Alice (Ella Connolly), mauled to death by a savage dog, veterinarian Patrick Daly (Gillen) and his pharmacist wife...