Every week, The GLAAD Wrap brings you LGBT-related entertainment news highlights, fresh stuff to watch out for, and fun diversions to help you kick off the weekend.
1) ABC Family's much buzzed-about show, Pretty Little Liars, is getting a spinoff, the network announced on Tuesday. Also announced was an early season five renewal for the show, which just began production on the fourth season. Ravenswood, from out Liars executive producer Marlene King, tells the story of five strangers, living in a town not far from the Liars' Rosewood, who are connected by an ancient curse. The spinoff is set to premiere in October after a special Halloween-themed episode of Pretty Little Liars. Pretty Little Liars has received two GLAAD Media Award nominations in the Outstanding Drama Series category.
2) Andy and Lana Wachowski, the masterminds behind The Matrix and the GLAAD Media Award-nominated film Cloud Atlas, have teamed up with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski to produce their first television show. The sci-fi thriller, titled Sense8, is set to premiere on Netflix in late 2014 and will consist of 10 episodes. Netflix describes the show as "a gripping global tale of minds linked and souls hunted."
3)CBS has renewed its critically acclaimed, LGBT-inclusive law drama The Good Wifefor a fifth season. The series features Archie Panjabi as bisexual private investigator Kalinda Sharma, and recurring characters Lana Delaney (Jill Flint), a lesbian FBI agent who has a history with Kalinda, and main character Alicia's out younger brother Owen Cavanaugh (Dallas Roberts).
4) Jesse Tyler Ferguson, best known as Mitchell Pritchett on ABC's Modern Family, has been tapped to guest star in a specialMary Tyler Moore Show reunion episode of Hot in Cleveland. Ferguson will play "a world-renowned, avant-garde director with whom Victoria (Wendie Malick) would kill to work," but she doesn't count on him being interested in wanting to film a different Cleveland character. His episode is set to air sometime in August. At the 23rd Annual GLAAD Media Awards the Hot in Cleveland cast accepted the award for Outstanding Individual Episode, and later Betty White and her cast presented Ferguson with the award for Outstanding Comedy Series for Modern Family. Watch the video below.
5) HBO's Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, has released it's first trailer. The film will premiere on HBO on Sunday, May 26 at 9:00pm. The stars appear in their Behind the Candelabra costumes on the cover of last month's Entertainment Weekly and gave an exclusive first look at the film's sets, costumes and cast. Watch the trailer here.
6) Wildly popular YouTube web series Husbands has been acquired by CW Digital Studio, the broadcast network's recently launched in-house digital content platform. The series, set in a world in which full marriage equality for same-sex couples has been achieved, follows an actor and his baseball-star husband as they learn to navigate newly-married life following a drunken Vegas wedding. Husbands creators Jane Espenson and Brad Bell are currently on tour to promote the hardcover digital comic collection based on the web series. Watch the Husbands trailer below.
7) ELIXHER, an "award-winning online destination for black lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer women" is launching new digital magazine, ELIXHER Magazine, and is looking for funding help. The site has been a hub for black LGBT women since 2011 and hopes to raise enough to cover the cost of increased website traffic, digital magazine overhead, legal and promotional fees. Learn more at the ELIXHER Magazine indiegogo page.