A brief roundup of a few TV casting reports:

  • Will Arnett has signed on to star in the untitled CBS sitcom created by Greg Garcia (Raising Hope).  Not a great sign for Arnett's current obligation, Up All Night.
  • Steve Zahn will star in Influence, the latest drama from Kyle Killen (Awake)
  • Rachel Lefevre is now the female lead in the CBS series adaptation of Stephen King's Under the Dome.

Hit the jump for details on each project.

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The CBS show is technically in second position to Up All Night, so if NBC goes through with plans to retool it as a multi-camera sitcom and then goes on to renew it for next season, Arnett is locked in to Up All Night.  But that sequence of events grows increasingly unlikely as the low-rated show just lost Arnett's co-star Christina Applegate, who understandably wants to move on to other projects.  THR provides the synopsis:

"The unauthorized Greg Garcia project, as it is currently being billed, centers on a recently divorced man named Jack, whose life is complicated when his parents decide to move in with him."

Killen is one of the most exciting, fresh voices working in TV today.  Unfortunately, his first two series---Lone Starand Awake---only managed to last a combined 15 episodes on the air.  Hopefully Influence will be the one with staying power, because Zahn has the charm to lead a weekly series and the synopsis [via THR] is unsurprisingly intriguing:

"The provocative workplace ensemble centers on the complicated relationship between two brothers who head a unique agency designed to attack their clients' problems using the real science of human motivation and manipulation.

Zahn will play Clark, one of the two brothers. He's an unmedicated bipolar world-renowned expert in the fields of human behavior, psychology and motivation and a former professor whose academic career imploded when the university became aware he was having an affair with a 22-year-old undergraduate."

Lastly, Lefevre will join Mike Vogel and Dean Norris as one of the leads of Under the Dome.  The series centers on the response of a community to a giant dome that traps the entire town.  THR has the details on Lefevre's role:

"Lefevre will play Julia, an investigative reporter who just moved from Chicago to Chester's Mill with her husband, a doctor at the town's medical center. She's the editor of the town's local paper and is intrigued after learning of multiple deliveries of propane gas to a nearby warehouse. She's baffled by the appearance of the strange dome but more concerned with the whereabouts of her mysteriously missing husband."

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