Hulu has placed orders for two new TV shows that aren’t very closely related but do happen to star women and have been announced at the same time. The first, Reprisal, gives a starring role to Rectify and Timeless’s Abigail Spencer, who will play a “relentless femme fatale … who, after being left for dead, leads a vengeful campaign against a bombastic gang of gear heads.” It will premiere in 2019 and will also star Rodrigo Santoro, Mena Massoud, Madison Davenport, Rhys Wakefield, David Dastmalchian, W. Earl Brown and Gilbert Owuor. The revenge series is created, written, and executive produced by Josh Corbin, while Warren Littlefield, Barry Jossen and Jonathan van Tulleken, who also directed the pilot. It sounds cool!
Hulu’s other order goes out to everyone who watched The Favourite and thought “I want more of that.” It’s The Great, “a genre bending, anti-historical ride through 18th Century Russia following the wildly comic rise of Catherine the Nothing to Catherine the Great.” It will star Elle Fanning as Catherine, with a supporting cast that includes period-drama enthusiast Nicholas Hoult, Phoebe Fox, Adam Godley, Gwilym Lee, Charity Wakefield, Douglas Hodge and Sacha Dhawan. Tony McNamara, who co-wrote The Favourite, created, wrote, and executive produced The Great. The rest of the list of executive producers includes Marian Macgowan; Thruline’s Josh Kesselman and Ron West; Echo Lake’s Brittany Kahan Ward, Doug Mankoff and Andrew Spaulding; Elle Fanning; and Matt Shakman, who also directed the pilot. The Great will premiere in 2020, probably because we have to wait for them to find all the right wigs.
