Christopher Atkins has new movie projects

Ah ... so many classic TV stars, so little time ... The four core shows of the BRBTV fact-book series, as well as the assorted animated series added in through the BRBTV Reports, allow for lots of checking in and catching up with great classic stars of the small screen. Case in point: Mr. Christopher Atkins, who, still fresh out of the attention-getting "Blue Lagoon," providing a hunky hand to the seventh season of "Dallas" as poolboy to Sue Ellen -- er, we mean, camp counselor to little John Ross. Nowadays, Atkins, who has kept up pretty steady acting work over the years, has a couple new projects in the works. We reported on them earlier this year, and now we check in with a little more info ...

"The Hard Ride" is a western that just began production earlier this year. Atkins has the juicy role of George Custer (he can't be that old!) in this tale, which has this plotline from the IMDb: "Action and death follow a legendary gunfighter and his close friends to 1876 Deadwood, Dakota Territory." Thadd Turner directs, writes and stars in the flick. Filming locations include Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where lots of good westerns have been filmed. The movie has a scheduled release date in May of next year. It comes from Talmarc Productions. Turner himself has written a nice synopsis of the film at OldWestAlive.com.

The character name of Wild Bill may make Atkins' other project, "Blind Ambition," sound like a western, too, but it's actually classified as a romance / teen comedy. Atkins doesn't have much big-star company in this one, either, which is listed as in post-production and scheduled for release this year. It's directed by Bala Rajasekharuni and written by Alpesh Patel. I-Run.com reports more on the film.

Also this year, Atkins appears in "Chinaman's Chance," and here he gets some great co-stars: Ernest Borgnine, Olivia Hussey, fellow primetime sudser Lorenzo Lamas, Coolio, Theresa Russell.