David James Elliott cast in mini-series disaster flick
Are you ready for some major disaster film effects? Were you disappointed that there wasn’t more destruction when the Golden Gate Bridge broke in half on Eli Stone (I was.) Then you, like me, will be pleased to hear that David James Elliott is starring in a four-hour mini-series called Impact. Producers are promising lots of action and Charlton Heston-like epic disaster. Okay, maybe I added the Charlton Heston adjective, but at $13 million, the guys at Muse Entertainment, Jaffe/Braunstein Entertainment and Tandem Communications aren’t skimping.
Casting David is a plus for starters. The former JAG star has a nice balance of serious and tongue-in-cheek, so hopefully he’ll keep Impact from getting too cheesey. The story, however, does have Velveeta potential.
The plot erupts when a meteor shower results in a piece of a dwarf star (no, I was going to make a joke about Michael Dunn, but I’ll refrain) breaks off and collides into the moon. The impact (get the title now?) causes the moon to shift out of orbit which leads to all kinds of problems here on earth.
Big problems, too. Cell phone interruptions. Cable and satellite interference. No, no, those are the minor inconveniences. The really big ones are the tides not rolling in on schedule and — I love this one — sporadic weightlessness! I want to try that one.
In Michael Vickerman’s screenplay, David’s character is Alex Kinter, an astrophysicist. He teams with a female astrophysicist (uncast so far), and together they find out that the moon is so out of whack that it’s going to collide with the earth. How do they solve the problem? Well, we’ll just have to tune in to find out.
David James Elliott returns to TV
Since the JAG series finale, many fans have been waiting for David James Elliott to return to TV. The actor eventually did when he landed the role of James Conlon in the CBS series Close to Home. His stay on the show was cut short when the series was canceled at the end of its second season (DJE appeared in 22 episodes of the series). Since then, the actor vanished from the small screen and fans have been patiently waiting (and watching reruns of JAG) for his return. But fans can now rejoice as Elliott returns to TV this week. The catch? It airs on a Canadian network!
This is of course not a problem for myself and TV’s Canadian readers. David James Elliott will appear in Global TV’s The Guard, a one-hour drama about Coast Guard rescue specialists working out on the Pacific Ocean. Elliott will play David Nelson, a recurring character on the series.
The Guard debuts tonight (January 22) at 10 pm ET/PT on Global TV and also stars Andromeda’s Steve Bacic. It is unknown if a U.S. network will buy the rights to air the series at a later time.
Catherine Bell Biography
A beguiling dark-eyed beauty with a statuesque figure, Catherine Bell rose to prominance on the military-themed television series “JAG” (1995 -2005) as Maj. Sarah “Mac” MacKenzie. Born in London, Bell emigrated to California with her Iranian mother at the age of two and began acting and modeling as a child. After a stint as a fashion model in Japan, Bell first got a foothold in Hollywood as a body double, performing a nude scene for Isabella Rossellini in director Robert Zemeckis’ “Death Becomes Her” (1992). Small roles in TV movies, C-level action flicks, sydicated fare including “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” and racy TV series such as HBO’s risque comedy “Dream On” and the erotic cable anthology “Hot Line”–which made great advantage of her enviable physique–followed.
She made her “JAG” debut on an 1996 episode as Lt. Diane Schonke, the love interest of lead character Harm (David James Elliott). After return engagements her character was tragically killed off, but Bell learned that “JAG” producer Don Bellasario was looking for a new regular female lead for the series and wrote Bellasario a letter, suggesting that it would be intirguing if the new character were the spitting image of Harm’s lost love. Bellasario agreed and Bell joined the cast as a new character, Maj. Sarah “Mac” MacKenzie when the show switched networks from NBC to CBS in 1997. She parlayed her visibility and the show’s mainstream popularity–especially with military supporters–into several magazine covers and roles in telepics, ultimately landing a high-profile movie role as the object of Jim Carrey’s lust in the comedy “Bruce Almighty” (2003). When her co-star Elliott announced his attention to leave the show following its tenth season in 2004-2005, producers initially planned to reshape the series around Bell, but the network ultimately pulled the plug on the show.
- Born:
on 08/14/68 in London, England - Job Titles:
Actor, Model
Family
- Grandparents: spoke Farsi
Significant Others
- Husband: . Adam
Education
- University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, pre-med
Milestones
- 1971 Moved to Los Angeles with family (date approximate)
- 1992 Served as Isabella Rossellini’s body double in “Death Becomes Her”
- 1993 Had supporting role in the NBC movie “Mother of the Bride”
- 1995 Feature acting debut “Men of War”
- 1997 Joined cast of “JAG” playing Sarah ‘Mac’ MacKenzie when show moved to CBS
- 1998 Co-starred with Maureen O’Hara in the CBS TV-movie “Cab to Canada”
- 2003 Returned to the big screen in the comedy “Bruce Almighty”
- Spent several months in Japan as a model