Starz has chosen Australian actor Liam McIntyre to step into Andy Whitfield’s sandals for the eagerly anticipated second season of its hit series “Spartacus: Blood and Sand.” McIntyre, whose modest resume includes an appearance on HBO’s WWII miniseries “The Pacific,” will now play the titular hero.

McIntyre tells NY Times:

It’s been the toughest thing. Every actor dreams of getting a big break, a big opportunity. Andy’s such a wonderful actor. I don’t want to follow that guy, and everybody hurts that he’s had to give up the role, myself included.

Andy’s Spartacus is always going to be Andy’s Spartacus, and I would never try and emulate that. Or try to be him. I think that should stand alone as his legacy.

All I know is my foreseeable future is living in the gym. They’ll tell me when I can start doing the lines and doing the performance. There’ll be some acting there eventually, I’m sure.

“Spartacus: Blood and Sand” debuted last January to over a million viewers, making it the Starz network’s most watched program. Whitfield’s on-going battle with Stage 1 non-Hodgkin lymphoma forced him to step down as the show’s Spartacus character back in September.

“Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” is a six-part prequel series originally created to buy Whitfield some time back when he was first diagnosed. The show follows Batiatus (John Hannah) and his wife Lucretia (Lucy Lawless) as they strive for power and influence over the city of Capua. It premieres on Friday.

Starz plans to air “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” season two in September.

After five years of spooking old people on the CBS series “The Ghost Whisperer,” Jennifer Love Hewitt appears to really be getting into the spirit of horror. The 31-year-old starlet and vajazzling enthusiast will make her feature directorial debut with an adaptation of author Mary Downing Hahn’s novel “Wait Till Helen Comes: A Ghost Story.”

Barnes & Noble provides the book’s synopsis:

Heather is such a whiny little brat. Always getting Michael and me into trouble. But since our mother married her father, we’re stuck with her…our “poor stepsister” who lost her real mother in a mysterious fire. But now something terrible has happened.

Heather has found a new friend, out in the graveyard behind our home — a girl named Helen who died with her family in a mysterious fire over a hundred years ago. Now her ghost returns to lure children into the pond…to drown! I don’t want to believe in ghosts, but I’ve followed Heather into the graveyard and watch her talk to Helen. And I’m terrified. Not for myself, but for Heather…

Hewitt, who directed several episodes of “The Ghost Whisperer” during its run, will also serve as producer through her Fedora Films imprint. Cameras are expected to roll in summer.

“Californication” fans jonsing for another glimpse of Eva Amurri and her glorious breasts will want to take note of director Stephen T. Kay’s upcoming medical frightener Isolation. The 25-year-old stunner plays an amnesia-stricken med school student who wakes up to find that she is infected by a mysterious disease .

Amurri got her start in Hollywood starring alongside her mother Susan Sarandon in the 2002 comedy The Banger Sisters. She is best known, however, for  playing busty student-turned-stripper Jackie on the third season of Showtime’s hit dramedy “Californication.”

See why:

Colombian beauty queen Paola Turbay will be adding some sabor to the upcoming fourth season of HBO’s hit supernatural soap “True Blood.” The 40-year-old stunner has been cast as Antonia, a vampire—and possible love interest—for tormented vamp Bill Compton while in Peru conducting personal business.

Turbay, who was named Miss Colombia in 1991 and was first runner-up as Miss Universe in 1992, is best known for her roles on USA’s rogue-doctor dramedy “Royal Pains,” ABC Family’s “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” TNT’s “The Closer,” and the short-lived 1999 CBS drama “Cane.”

Fans of Showtime’s “Californication” series will recognize Turbay from her appearance on season two’s episode “Going Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” in which she played a sultry pot-smoking maid who does a great job of polishing Hank Moody’s knob.

It’s hard to imagine actress Rebecca Hall wearing a small, clingy blood-splattered tee while fighting off some supernatural force in a scary movie. The sexy 28-year-old star of  Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Chris Nolan’s The Prestige, and last year’s sleeper hit The Town, has made a career out of playing modestly attired women who’d rather show off their brains than boobs.

Looking at the first image of Hall from her upcoming ghost story The Awakening (pictured below), that clingy tee is staying in the closet. Set in 1920’s England, the film stars Hall as a paranormal party pooper out to prove that the apparition at a boy’s school is nothing more than the creation of mass hysteria.

The official synopsis reads:

THE AWAKENING is set in 1921, in a post-war world of loss where the bereaved seek solace in spiritualism. Haunted by the death of her fiancé, Florence spends her time debunking supernatural claims, using methodical and rational explanations to disprove the notion that the dead can still haunt us.

She feels compelled to accept a request to go to Rookwood, a boarding school in the countryside where a boy has recently been found dead and rumours about a ghostly boy haunting the school are causing panic amongst pupils and parents alike.

Florence sets to work immediately, laying traps, gathering scientific evidence, uncovering secrets and seemingly unravelling the mystery. However, as Florence is about to leave, she has a chilling spectral encounter which defies all of her rational beliefs and sets her on a journey toward a heartbreaking climax…

The Awakening marks TV director Nick Murphy’s feature film debut and is written by Stephen Volk (“Ghostwatch”). The thriller is produced by Origin Films and costars Dominic West (Hannibal Rising) and Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).

[Show as slideshow]

If your penis ran away from home one day, hopped on a Greyhound bus, and headed to Hollywood to make a movie, what kind of movie would it make?

Well, if it’s anything like indie-director Jon Hewitt’s penis, it would produce a gritty thriller about hookers, strippers, and more hookers entitled X. It would also cast sexy Australian shelias Hanna Mangan Lawrence and “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” starlet Viva Bianca as its naked leads.

Peep the stroke-worthy trailer:

The film’s official synopsis reads:

Holly Rowe (Bianca) is retiring, kissing her callgirl life goodbye. She just has to get through her last night on the job. Shay Ryan (Lawrence) is a teenage runaway, broke and alone. She just has to get through her first night as a hooker.

Fate throws them together on a job that goes horribly wrong and they’re suddenly racing on an out-of-control roller coaster ride, through Sydney’s criminal underworld. X is a sizzling thriller about love, chance, escape and the oldest profession experienced by two women on a night that will change their lives forever.

(UPDATE: TO SEE X PHOTOS OF VIVA & HANNA GO HERE)

X has already locked distribution deals in the States and the U.K. through IFC Films and Revolver, respectively. The film will have its premiere at the European Film Market in Berlin before making the festival circuit.

Bianca is best known for her turn as Commander Legatus Claudius Glaber’s oft-nude wife Iliythia on Starz’s hit swords-and-sandals series “Spartacus: Blood and Sand.” Nineteen-year-old Lawrence starred in Hewitt’s Acolytes, but has yet to make a name for herself in the States. Her full-frontal nude scene (at the 1:22 mark) in X just might change that.

Go on. Have seconds:

Univision has kicked off the third season of Mexican producer Pedro Torres’ scandalous—and often erotically charged—femme-fatale anthology series “Mujeres Asesinas.” A mix between “Desperate Housewives” and “CSI,” the show follows women as they viciously discard the men who have wronged them.

Like most Latin soaps, “Mujeres Asesinas” features many beautiful, top-heavy starlets, but adds quality story-telling, suspense and an eye-catching style not commonly seen in such productions. In fact, the show appears to be the inspiration behind Cinemax’s upcoming new series “Femme Fatales,” which finds model-turned actress Tanit Phoenix narrating the crimes of homicidal hotties.

“Mujeres Asesinas 3” stars Dulce Maria, Belinda, Giselle Blondet, Aleida Nunez, Dominika Paleta, Kiki Edgar, Zuria Vega, Maite Perroni and the sexier Mila Kunis look-a-like Aislinn Derbez. The show airs every Thursday night at 10 p.m.

Peep the promo:

If you think porn would be a whole lot better if there weren’t any gratuitous double-anals to distract from the stories, you’ll want to check out Breaking Glass Pictures’ werewolf frightener Half Moon.

Directed by Jason Toler, the film stars porn star and Penthouse Pet Tori Black as a down-and-out street hooker who takes a private with a client who may be a lycan.

Black is the 22-year-old star of Anal Buffet 5, Brother Load, Black Up In Her, and Cum Coat My Throat 4. She is part of the growing number of professional cock-sockets crossing over to indie-horror (See: Riley Steele, Jasmine St. Claire, Belladonna, Maria Lapiedra, Sora Aoi and Sasha Grey).

Peep the trailer:

Sony Pictures has released the first official photo of its Spiderman reboot star Andrew Garfield and his green goblins tucked into his web-slinger costume (see above). The pic also gives us a glimpse at homemade web-shooters on the wrists of the outfit (see below).

The web-shooters have got comic geeks tingling with joy and anticipation. Apparently, in old-school Spidey comics, young Peter Parker designs the contraptions to compliment his newly acquired powers (unlike the Sam Raimi movies in which the webs are organic).

Directed by Mark Webb, the Spiderman reboot is an origins film based on Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley’s “Ultimate Spiderman” comics, which finds our fiendly neighborhood crime-fighter back in high school. The film is budgeted at $80 million and will be released in 3-D on July 3, 2012.

Photos: SlashFilm.

[Show as slideshow]

British actress Wendy Glenn has been cast as the female lead in SAW II-IV director Darren Lynn Bousman’s eagerly anticipated damnation flick 11-11-11. Now shooting in Barcelona, the film costars Timothy Gibbs, Michael Landes, Brenden Price, and Spanish actors Ángela Rosal, Salomé Jimenez, Benjamin Cook, Montse Alcoverro and Lluis Soler.

The premise behind 11-11-11 is rooted in the superstitious belief that celestial guardians use the numbers to warn us about the impending doom-and-gloom heading our way when the 11th gate of Heaven opens for 49 minutes and we, as a people, are too busy snorting coke, fucking whores, and/or watching HBO to care about repenting.

The film’s official synopsis reads:

After the tragic death of his wife and child, famed American author Joseph Crone (Gibbs) travels from the United States to Barcelona, Spain to reunite with his estranged brother Samuel (Landes) and dying father, Richard. However, fate has a different plan for Joseph as his life becomes plagued with strange happenings, and the constant sightings of the number 11.

Curiosity quickly turns to obsession, and Joseph soon realizes that this number holds a horrific meaning not only to himself but possibly to all of religion. Isolated in a foreign country with only the support of his companion, Sadie (Glenn), Joseph soon realizes that 11/11/11 is more than just a date, it’s a WARNING.

Truth-be-told, I used to see the 11:11 on my clock and watches all the time. I would just happen to glance at the clock and there it was, day or night. Holy Shit! Look at the time this post went up … I’m just fucking with you. It is a cool and creepy premise though.

Wendy Glenn is perhaps best known in the States for her portrayal of pretty carpet-muncher Isabella on the Showtime lesbian drama “The L-Word.” Mystery fans may also recognize her as Pascale on Fox TV’s short-lived whodunit series “Reunion.”

Her most memorable role, however, involves planting a big wet one on Katie Cassidy’s kisser on the now canceled “Melrose Place” reboot: