Premium Manga: Starz has given the green light to Sam Raimi (Spider-man, Drag Me to Hell) and his collaborator Rob Tapert to turn the Japanese anime series Noir into a live-action show for the network. They will exec produce; Stephen Lightfoot will write. The show is “about two female assassins working in a criminal underworld. After discovering they’re mysteriously linked, the two have to work together on missions (under the moniker of “Noirâ€) until they figure out why and how they are connected — or until one of them kills the other.†[HR]
Amateur Half-Hour: Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas (unrelated to the guy from Matchbox 20) has signed a deal with Fox to create a show called Little in Common, a comedy “about three families whose lives have become intertwined through youth sports.†It’s the second comedy he’s currently working on produced by the Warner Brothers TV studio; the other show, for NBC, is Temp. [Deadline]
Stalling Wilde: The struggling Will Arnett–Keri Russell Fox comedy Running Wilde is nearly off life support. One day after news broke that Christian Slater’s Breaking In might be replacing the show, word came down that Fox had pulled Wilde off the air for the rest of November sweeps. Despite Arnett’s ardent support, it’s hard to believe the show, which just finished a “distant last among all programs on the Big 4 networks,†has much life remaining in it. [Deadline]
True Blood is loading up for its Season 4. The HBO show announced today that Courtney Ford (of Dexter and, naturally, The Vampire Diaries) would be joining the cast as “Portia Bellefleur, a classic Southern beauty who runs her own law practice. The character is the sister of Bon Temps’ bumbling detective Andy†(Chris Bauer). [Deadline]