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ABC TV Pilot RED WIDOW About Russian Mob – Updated

ABC pilot Red Widow, inspired by a popular Dutch TV series, is about a San Francisco mobster’s widow forced to replace her husband as head of what appears to be a Russian crime syndicate, judging from the filming at Lana Lou’s restaurant dressed as Cafe Rossiya in Vancouver’s downtown east side last month.

Australian Radha Mitchell stars as the widow Marta who takes her mobster husband’s place to protect her family, with Sterling Beaumon and Jacob Salvati as her sons and Erin Moriarty as her daughter. Luke Goss (Hellboy II) plays bodyguard to her mob father Andrei Lazarev, a bodyguard who is then assigned to look after her and the kids. Lee Tergesen (Oz) plays a foot soldier in the crime syndicate and Suleka Mathew (Hawthorne) is Marta’s best friend Dina, while Jaime Ray Newman is Marta’s younger sister Kat.

Penned and produced by Twilight scribe Melissa Rosenberg, the pilot Red Widow (working title Penoza) filmed here from March 20th to April 3rd using the production signs PEN. After the first day of filming on Powell Street at Cafe Rossiya, I heard of sightings of PEN signs near West Vancouver’s Eagle Harbour and out in Steveston.

UPDATE: ABC picked up Red Widow for a mid-season eight-episode series . Filming of the next seven episodes starts in Vancouver on August 23rd. Here’s a link to a teaser and cast photo which doesn’t include the latest addition — ER’s Goran Visnjic as mafia mob boss Schiller.