tom berenger

The History Channel is putting this summer's 'Kennedys' debacle behind it and is busy assembling a starry cast for its latest original drama project.

According to Variety, Tom Berenger, Powers Boothe and Mare Winningham have signed on for roles in History's upcoming mini-series 'The Hatfields and McCoys: An American Vendetta.'

They join previously announced leads Bill Paxton (Randall McCoy) and Kevin Costner (Anse Hatfield) in the period piece, which follows the bloody 13-year feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families.

The new drama October Road will slide into the post-Grey's Anatomy slot, Thursday at 10pm, on March 15, knocking the Anne Heche show Men In Trees onto the shelf for about a month (that show will return in April).

I've been looking forward to October Road ever since I first heard about it last year, for two reasons. One, I found out a friend of mine is working on it, and two, it's about a writer who decides to go back to his hometown and the people there resent him because of all of the things he wrote about them in his books. That sounds like a great premise, though I wonder how it will translate to weekly television.

The show stars Bryan Greenberg (Unscripted, One Tree Hill, Life With Bonnie) as the writer. Also in the cast are Tom Berenger, Laura Prepon, and Geoff Stults.

[via TV Tattle]

(S01E05) "The Road Virus Heads North," from Stephen King's collection Everything's Eventual, is a pretty straightforward horror tale, especially for King. That doesn't mean it's a bad story, but it seems like the kind of spooky campfire tale that would come easily to him, and this TV adaptation moves along rather quickly, just like the story itself. The living painting that chronicles the journey of the madman within it is based on an actual painting owned by King.

Tom Berenger plays a horror novelist named Richard Kinnell who lives in Derry, Maine (the same fictional town where King's novels IT and Insomnia take place). King uses part of his story to poke fun at people who ask him the same two questions over and over: Where do you get your ideas? And do you ever scare yourself? Kinnell encounters those questions when he attends a book signing where rabid fans cheer and crowd around him as if he's a rock star rather than just a writer. He has other things on his mind however, because he just received his first colonoscopy and it's possible he has cancer. On his drive back home he stops off at a yard sale and purchases a painting of a crazy-looking driver with scraggly hair driving a car across a bridge. The painting is titled "The Road Virus Heads North" (natch) and the woman who sells it to him explains that the kid who painted it was a depressed coke-addled genius who painted several other paintings much more horrific than this one, but burned them all on the front lawn before hanging himself with a chain in the garage.