Unusual times call for unusual measures. This year, the Television Academy is handing out its 2020 Creative Arts Emmy Awards over five nights, leading up to Sunday when the big, semi-live ceremony will be broadcast on ABC with Jimmy Kimmel hosting. Wednesday’s big winner was The Mandalorian which won the Emmy for outstanding special visual effects. Netflix took the most awards (for documentary Cheer and Queer Eye). CNN won three for Apollo 11. More news to come.

Well this should be fun! Kevin Hart is helping to relaunch the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s annual telethon, previously hosted by the late comedy icon, Jerry Lewis. The last MDA telethon was broadcast in 2014, with Nancy O’Dell as host. Hart will takeover the Oct. 24 event, with Eva Longoria, Michael B. Jordan, Jack Black, Josh Gad, Usain Bolt and Jillian Mercado also set to appear at the event, which will include comedy and musical performances. More names will be revealed soon — we’ll keep you posted.

Jessica Chastain is the latest esteemed movie star to take a juicy television role. She’ll play country music legend Tammy Wynette in a limited series for Spectrum Originals and the Paramount Network, which is a bit of a surprise. The drama was was originally developed as a Fox Searchlight feature film. Called  George & Tammy, it focuses on the life and times of Wynette and George Jones, the country music power couple whose tumultuous relationship inspired their iconic music. The limited series is based on the book The Three of Us: Growing Up with Tammy and George, written by Wynette and Jones’ daughter, Georgette Jones. See more on The Hollywood Reporter.

Michael Crichton’s bestseller “Sphere” will be the basis for a new HBO drama series, brought to life by Robert Downey Jr’s Team Downey, and Westworld executive producer and writer Denise Thé. If the story, about a team of scientists who find a mysterious object a thousand feet under the ocean, sounds familiar, that’s because the novel was adapted as a 1998 feature film starring Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson. Let’s see HBO try to top that cast!

Becoming Brit Keira Knightley has been busy lately, having just signed on to star in and executive produce a a new drama series for Apple. Called The Essex Serpent, it’s a period drama based on Sarah Perry’s Award-winning novel of the same name. It follows newly widowed Cora, played by Knightley, who relocates to a remote village from Victorian London after being released from an abusive marriage.