Culture 4 min read By Lauren Baxter
Tracy Morgan's 30 Rock pals join The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins
Two former 30 Rock castmates are set to join Tracy Morgan in the new season of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, while Nikolaj Coster-Waldau headlines a horror series adapted from The Black Tapes podcast.
Tracy Morgan will be joined by a pair of familiar faces from 30 Rock when The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins returns for its second season. The casting of two former castmates from the NBC sitcom has drawn attention among fans of the series, which reunites a group of performers who shaped the classic comedy. The names of the two actors were not included in the material available to this newsroom.
The announcement arrives during a busy stretch of casting news across film and television, with several genre projects moving forward at once. Among them is a horror investigation series that brings a Game of Thrones actor to the small screen, a psychological thriller from Apple TV and a feature film based on a popular video game.
At MGM+, the horror investigation series The Black Tapes has been greenlit with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau attached to star in the lead role. The eight-episode series is based on the podcast of the same name, created by Terry Miles and Paul Bae, which originally debuted in 2015 and has been downloaded more than 60 million times. Coster-Waldau, best known for playing Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones, will headline the project as the podcast's investigative story moves to television. The adaptation carries the podcast's central premise of a horror investigation into the unexplained into a scripted format, with a hit audio property providing a large built-in audience.
Apple TV is also developing Ascension, a one-hour psychological horror thriller associated with Alfonso Cuarón. Bill Nighy will star opposite Caitríona Balfe in the series, which is co-showrun by Natalie Erika James and Christian White. Inspired by the novel Last Days by Adam Nevill, the show follows Rose, a relentless documentary filmmaker and recently divorced mother played by Balfe. Nighy, known for Living and About Time, takes a leading supporting role opposite her. The pairing of a veteran British actor with a psychological genre story reflects the streaming service's continued interest in prestige horror.
Separately, the psychological horror game Madison is heading to the big screen. Los Angeles-based Story Kitchen, a production company that specializes in adapting games into movies, has signed an agreement with Madison developer Bloodious Games to develop a feature film set in the world of the first-person horror title. The deal places the studio's track record of game-to-film work alongside an original, unsettling horror property. No casting information has been announced for the film, and no release timeline was included in the available reporting.
Taken together, the announcements show how horror continues to travel across formats, from audio podcasts and video games to streaming originals and studio features. For fans of Reggie Dinkins, the reunion of 30 Rock alumni offers a comedic counterpoint to a crowded slate of genre projects, and for readers following the Game of Thrones alumni now moving into new territory, the MGM+ series marks another step in that actor's post-Westeros career.
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