Pilots

Amanda Tapping, star and executive producer of web series gone TV show Sanctuary, will still be playing Dr. Helem Magnus, "The fact is it's already evolving. Our pilot that we're now going to start shooting is very different from what you've seen on the Web. But [Magnus] is still this crazy character. She's 157 years old, and she's very eccentric and very sexy and very unapologetic. I love it." The pilot will premiere later this year on SciFi Channel.

Simon Baker will play the titlist character in The Mentalist, about a man who uses his keen sense of observation to solve crimes. Cast includes Owain Yeoman, Amanda Righetti, Shaun Toub, and Tim Kang.

ABC has greenlit the Tom Wheeler written pilot for Atlas, "a mashup of the Harry Potter books and Pan's Labyrinth, about a girl who discovers a secret world beneath the human world."

Christopher Egan and Ian McShane have been cast in NBC's pilot for drama Kings, a "contemporary take" on the Bible's King David.

A live action series of Yokusaru Shibata's shogi (chess like Japanese game) manga 81diver will premiere May 3 on Fuji TV. It's about a player named Kentaro Sugata who leaves the pros and becomes a "Shinkenshi," or a player who gambles, where he meets his match in female Shinkenshi Soyo Nakashizu.