From the Toronto Star:
Actress Shirley MacLaine has joined the cast of the Anne of Green Gables television movie.
CTV says the Academy-award winner will play matriarch Amelia Thomas in the film, “Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning.”
MacLaine begins filming this week in southwestern Ontario and shoots through the end of the month.
The “Terms of Endearment” star joins U.S. actress Barbara Hershey, who plays the grown-up Anne Shirley, and Hannah Endicott-Douglas, who plays the young Anne Shirley.
The movie, a prequel to the original miniseries “Anne of Green Gables,” is set to air on CTV in 2008.
CTV says MacLaine’s character pops up in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s first novel but has been shaped into a principal character for the film.
Thomas is a wealthy, powerful and unlikable widow who runs the prosperous lumber town, Marysville, N.B.
After taking in her daughter-in-law Louisa Thomas, played by Rachel Blanchard, Amelia’s miserable temperament is transformed for the better by imaginative and playful Anne Shirley.
See also Canoe’s article on this casting addition.