null 2 casting notices (1 film and 1 TV), plus an upcoming TV show in crisis.

First, Keith Robinson has joined the cast of Universal’s James Brown biopic, Get On Up, playing Baby Roy, one of the original members of the Godfather of Soul’s band.

He joins star Chadwick Bozeman (as James Brown), Jill Scott, Dan Aykroyd, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Lennie James in the Tate Taylor-directed film.

Shooting on the project begins this fall, in Mississippi, with Brian Grazer producing alongside Mick Jagger, for Universal Pictures.

Promising a warts and all telling of Brown’s life story on film, the screenplay was penned by Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth (they wrote the script for Fair Game, the Naomi Watts and Sean Penn film).

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Keith Robinson (both an actor and singer) previously appeared in Dreamgirls and This Christmas.

Second, South African actress Lesley-Ann Brandt (Spartacus) has been cast in Lifetime’s dystopian, conspiracy drama pilot, The Lottery, from writer Timothy J. Sexton and director Danny Cannon.

The Lottery is set in a world where women have stopped having children, which is an obvious threat to the human race. When 100 embryos are successfully fertilized, a national lottery is held to decide the surrogates.

Lesley-Ann Brandt has signed up to play a U.S. soldier, longing for a child, who participates in the lottery, for a chance at being a surrogate.

The actress was most recently seen in a recurring role on VH1’s Single Ladies.

And finally, remember Crisis, the NBC action-drama that Lance Gross and Michael Beach were cast in earlier this year, with a 2013/2014 mid-season premiere date expected?

It’s been put on production hiatus.

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According to a Deadline report, a “course correction” is to blame for the sudden halt. Apparently, after half of the episodes had already been shot, production was stopped due to concern that the story was starting to veer from what the pilot episode promises. And so a senior level team of writers have been brought in to assist in reworking scripts.

Some reshoots are also planned on those episodes that have been completed.

This is likely not that big of a deal, as I’d assume this kind of thing happens from time to time. Although, how much these rewrites will affect the individual characters, we likely will never know.

Gross and Beach star alongside Dermot Mulroney and Gillian Anderson, in what is described as an emotionally-charged political action thriller set in Washington DC, that will follow Marcus Finley (played by Gross), an idealistic Secret Service agent who finds himself at the center of an international crisis on his first day on the job as the President’s son’s protection, when the son, along with several of his schoolmates, are kidnapped.

Here’s NBC’s official synopsis for the series:

It’s field trip day for the students of Ballard High School, a place that educates the children of Washington, D.C.’s elite, top-of-their-industry CEOs, international diplomats, political power players and even the president’s son. But when their bus is ambushed on a secluded rural road, the teenagers and their chaperones are taken, igniting a national crisis. Now with some of the country’s most powerful parents at the mercy of one vengeful mastermind, the question arises: How far would you go and what would you become to ensure your child’s safe return? With so many parents and dignitaries put into play with nowhere to turn and no one to trust, this unthinkable scenario grows from the select families at risk to an entire nation at stake.

Michael Beach plays the FBI Director who’s managing the crisis, with Rachael Taylor, Stevie Lynn Jones, Halston Sage, Joshua Erenberg, Max Schneider, James Lafferty, and Max Martini, rounding out the cast.

Phillip Noyce (Salt, Patriot Games) directed the pilot.

No word on whether this hiatus shifts the series’ ETA.

Lesley-Ann Brandt

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