By Mark Kennedy, AP Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --The Fox network has cast Maya Rudolph to help lead the live TV musical "A Christmas Story" this winter.
The "Saturday Night Live" veteran and star of "Bridesmaids" will play the mother of 9-year-old Ralphie Parker, the boy at the center of the musical who dreams of landing an air rifle for Christmas.
The show will air Dec. 17. More casting will be announced later.
The Broadway production of "A Christmas Story: The Musical" opened in 2012 with a score by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, recent Tony Award winners for the musical "Dear Evan Hansen." It was nominated for three Tony Awards, including best musical, best book and best original score.
The musical is based on the 1983 film, which was based on Jean Shepherd's semiautobiographical story.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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