Angela Bassett makes rounds for last ER shift
ER is adding star power for its final season. Angela Bassett will join the cast of the medical drama as a regular in the fall, the first full-time series gig for the Oscar-nominated star of What’s Love Got To Do With It. Bassett will play a troubled physician who’s coming back to Chicago after a few years in Indonesia doing tsunami relief. Her arrival in the second episode promises to shake County General’s ER to the core.
In addition to Bassett, original cast member Noah Wyle will join ER for its 15th and final season. As previously announced, he will guest star in at least four of the show’s planned 19 episodes. Wyle left the show at the end of Season 11 in 2005. Bassett, who starred in Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns, recently wrapped the B.I.G. biopic Notorious.

Coens to premiere new spy comedy at Venice Fest
Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading, the duo’s follow-up to their Oscar-winning drama No Country for Old Men, will have its world premiere as the opener of the summer’s Venice Film Festival. The dark spy comedy stars John Malkovich as an ousted CIA operative whose memoirs fall into the hands of two gym workers who set out to exploit their find. The film also stars George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Brad Pitt. The screening will follow the opening ceremony for the 65th edition of the Venice event on August 27. The festival runs through September 6. Burn After Reading will open in North America on September 12.

Witch Mountain kids return for remake
Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann, the original kid stars of Disney’s 1970s Witch Mountain movies, are coming back for the studio’s re-imagining of the adventure tales. Race To Witch Mountain, starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Carla Gugino, is currently in production. In a nod to the original movies, Eisenmann plays a sheriff and Richards a waitress at a roadhouse called Ray’s in a town called Stony Creek.
They help a Las Vegas cabbie (Johnson) and his two paranormal-powered passengers (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig), who are on the run from a diabolical group of men who wish to exploit their abilities. Richards appeared in Black Snake Moan, and Eisenmann did voice work for Howl’s Moving Castle.

Incredible Hulk re-do aims for marketing green
The Incredible Hulk returns to theatres on June 13 with tie-in partners including Burger King, 7-Eleven, Kmart, mall retailers, grocery store brands Pringles and Sargento, Airheads candy and Hasbro toys. As part of the push, the big green gamma-rayed guy will appear on a tricked-out custom motorcycle to be built during a cable TV show, and on hacker-fighting software in Best Buy and other big-box stores.
Still to be determined is whether audiences will embrace the do-over of 2003’s disappointing big-screen “Hulk.” Comic fans are a tough sell and, as Universal and Marvel Studios found, so are promotional partners who remember Ang Lee’s angsty version. The $150 million movie made a disappointing $132 million in North America, and less internationally.
In pitching French director Louis Leterrier’s current incarnation of the famous superhero, studio executives went to great lengths to tell potential partners how this “Hulk” would be different — and successful. “We know the ‘Hulk’ from 2003 didn’t satisfy the fans, and we had to acknowledge that,” said Stephanie Sperber, executive vp of Universal Studios Partnerships. “We emphasized the passion that fans still have for this character and that this is the movie people have always wanted.”
Key points of difference: Hulk (Edward Norton) is more clearly defined as a hero, which is both partner and merchandise friendly. He has a high-profile nemesis in the Abomination (Tim Roth), and he’s in love (with Liv Tyler). Even the new name should give partners like 7-Eleven an outsized hook for themed products. The Incredible Gulp, anyone?