'Castle Rock' Recasting One Of The Lead Roles

Mosaic and Inside Llewyn Davis's Garrett Hedlund will no longer be part of the cast of Castle Rock in the series' upcoming second season, with Hulu replacing the actor with character actor Paul Sparks. Sparks, who has appeared in Boardwalk Empire and The Girlfriend Experience, will take on the role of Ace Merrill, the town bully and nephew of Tim Robbins's Pop Merrill. According to The AV Club, Ace (previously played by Kiefer Sutherland in Stand By Me) is "primed to take over his uncle's business interests" with Pop nearing retirement. "but his promotion has troubling implications for the town's relationship with nearby Jerusalem's Lot.

Hedlund sis not appear in the show's critically acclaimed first season but was cast for season two, in which he was to introduce Ace opposite Lizzy Caplan as Annie Wilkes (the obsessive stalker-fan from Misery) and Elsie Fisher as Annie's daughter (a new character created for Castle Rock), had reportedly filmed a few scenes and was apparently not a fit for the series, according to Deadline. Barkhad Abdi, Matthew Alan, and Yusra Warsama will also appear in season two, which centers on an escalating battle between local families, exacerbated by the arrival of a troubled woman named Annie Wilkes.

A psychological-horror series set in a Stephen King universe, Castle Rock combines the mythological scale and intimate character storytelling of King's best-loved works, weaving an epic saga of darkness and light, played out on a few square miles of Maine woodland. The fictional Maine town of Castle Rockhas figured prominently in King's literary career: Cujo, The Dark Half, IT, and Needful Things, as well as novella "The Body" and numerous short stories such as "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" are either set there or contain references to Castle Rock. Castle Rock is an original suspense/thriller — a first-of-its-kind reimagining that explores the themes and worlds uniting the entire King canon, while brushing up against some of his most iconic and beloved stories.

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