Celeb roundup: Bella Ramsey (Lyanna Mormont) headlining a Netflix series, and much more
By Dan Selcke
Whether their characters be living or dead, members of the Game of Thrones cast are busy, busy, busy. Here’s what’s happening:
Bella Ramsey has only been in one season of the show, but her turn as little Lyanna Mormont has already made her a fan favorite. According to Entertainment.ie, she’ll star in Netflix’s remake of The Worst Witch. The original TV series, based on a series of children’s books by Jill Murphy, ran from 1998-2001 on ITV. The new show will follow Mildred Hubble (Ramsey) during her time as a student at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches.
The book series was also made into a TV movie in 1986. Oddly enough, it starred, among other people, Diana Rigg (Olenna Tyrell), so there’s already a Game of Thrones connection. It also starred Tim Currey as The Grand Wizard. Here he is singing a trippy song about Halloween. You’re welcome.
I can only hope that the Netflix show is anything like this.
In prestige news, Hannah Murray (Gilly) has joined the cast of Untitled Detroit Movie. Exciting, right?
The movie may not have an official title yet, but it’s written by Mark Boal and directed by Katherine Bigalow, the same team behind the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. It’s about the violent riots that rocked Detroit in 1967, so it should give Murray something dramatic to sink her teeth into.
Staying with the women on the cast, Entertainment Weekly got its hands on the trailer for The Leveling, a new movie starring Ellie Kendrick (Meera Reed). Kendrick plays a young woman named Clover who returns to the farm where she grew up to find it devastated by floods. She also discovers that her brother has committed suicide. She confronts her difficult father, Aubrey (David Troughton), and “[b]efore long, the relationship between the pair has deteriorated to the point of war.”
Moving along, Game of Thrones Robert Aramayo (Young Ned Stark) has joined the cast of Empty Man, about an ex-cop haunted by the deaths of his wife and child. Aramayo won’t play that cop—at the moment, his role is being kept under wraps, which is probably a familiar feeling.
Finally, the ever-industrious Natalie Dormer has landed a juicy film role. She’ll star opposite Mel Gibson and Sean Penn in The Professor and the Madman, about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gibson has been trying to get this project off the ground for years. He plays Professor James Murray, who set about compiling the Dictionary in 1857. Penn plays Dr. W.C. Minor, an inmate at an insane asylum who contributes to it. Meanwhile, Dormer plays the wife of a man Penn’s character killed. He tries to make amends, and “[a] complicated romance ensues.” We can imagine.