Kapoor Goes Solo: Mindy Kaling is getting her own show! The writer-producer-actress from The Office (she plays Kelly Kapoor) has signed a two-year, seven-figure deal with NBC, under which she’ll continue to work at her regular job while developing a comedy that she will write and star in. No details yet, although Kaling did say “I’ve always wanted to do another show about women†(after her WB pilot, Mindy and Brenda). Didn’t we sort of request this? Also, NBC=saved. [Variety]
More Wolverine: Twentieth Century Fox isn’t done squeezing the Wolverine lemon quite yet. Hot on the heels of yesterday’s sequel announcement comes Deadpool, a spinoff starring Ryan Reynolds’s character, a mercenary who undergoes Weapon X genetic-alteration experiment and cancer treatment and comes out crazy and indestructible. This is surely just the beginning; we wouldn’t be surprised if, eventually, Hugh Jackman’s mutton chops get to host their own facial-hair reality contest. [Variety]
Weisz Does Good: Rachel Weisz will star in indie drama The Whistleblower, based on the story of U.N. peacekeeper Kathryn Bolkovac. She’ll play a cop from Nebraska who travels to postwar Bosnia and discovers a sex-trafficking scandal covered up by the U.N. Apparently, after her partner Darren Aronofsky did not even manage an Oscar nomination for The Wrestler, Weisz knows it’s still up to her to bring home the Oscar bacon. [Variety]
Ferrell Settling Down: Will Ferrell and Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin are in talks to join the comedy Neighborhood Watch. Ferrell would play a guy who moves to the suburbs, joins the watch, and then stumbles upon a large conspiracy: a bootleg Will Ferrell–movie-distribution ring. [Variety]
Fantasy Island: Tom McCarthy will direct, and Peter Dinklage will star in HBO’s pilot Game of Thrones. In a removal from McCarthy’s realistic indies The Station Agent (starring Dinklage) and The Visitor, Thrones — adapted from George R.R. Martin’s “Songs of Fire and Ice†novels by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss — is about an epic power struggle in a violent fantasy kingdom. (Dinklage will play Tyrion, the Queen’s ostracized brother.) Good thing this is a fantasy project — stick to making stuff up, Templeton. [HR]
Mastodon’t: The members of Mastodon have written a screenplay based on their concept album, Crack the Skye — which features a quadriplegic and the theories of Stephen Hawking and Rasputin — and have sat down with an unnamed director to discuss an adaptation. But as drummer and lyricist Brann Dailor points out, “It’s hard for an A&R guy to go to whoever writes the checks and be like, ‘Yeah, this band that sells 150,000 records wants to make a million-dollar movie … ’†On that note, hooray for awesome-sounding things that will never happen! [Billboard]