Here's our first looks at Mulan, Netflix's Sabrina, and Will Ferrell's Sherlock Holmes movie

Welcome to Development Hell, the fiery pit into which we fling recent developments in casting, distribution, and everything else that’s new and mildly interesting in the Boschian phantasmagoria of the entertainment industry.

Tony Shalhoub finally settled the fiery debate over which assistant on Monk was the best, correctly noting in our recent interview that the way Traylor Howard’s Natalie befriended Monk was far superior to the way Bitty Schram’s Sharona yelled at him about his various disorders. Sadly, not all pop culture news can be about Monk, mostly because the show went off the air nine years ago, so let’s get on with it and talk about some other news.

• It’s apparently a good day for first looks at things, so let’s take some first looks at new shows and movies. Here’s the first look at Mulan, with star Liu Yifei getting down to business with a sword and a cool pose.

• And here’s a first look at Netflix’s Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina. It’s technically a second look, but this is a real image from the show while the last one was just a photo of the stars. We don’t really know what’s happening in these photos (you can see the other one up above), but consider us chilled.
• Here’s Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from the upcoming comedy Holmes & Watson. Did we just become best friends who solve mysteries?! 221B Baker Street must have so much room for activities!

• Finally, our last first look. This is Natalie Portman in Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux, a movie about the rise of a young pop star who survives a traumatic event. She looks pretty slick.

• Patrick Dempsey is set to star as an American bank guy in Devils, an adaptation of Guido Maria Brera’s novel of the same name. The show will be a 10-part series that also stars Italian actor Alessandro Borghi, but we don’t know when/where you might be able to see it in the United States. [via Deadline]
• Benicio Del Toro will be starring in White Lies, a new film from Oliver Stone. The movie will be an “intimate New York-set drama” that follows three generations of a family as a man (Del Toro) repeats the mistakes his parents made. It sounds surprisingly low-key for an Oliver Stone movie. [via Deadline]
• ABC has given the green light to a pilot for a spin-off of The Middle centering on Eden Sher’s Sue Heck. It’s just a pilot, which means it’s not officially moving forward as a real show yet, but it’s at least coming close. [via Deadline]
• Barbara Crampton from Re-Animator and Chopping Mall has joined The Dream Door, the next season of Syfy’s horror anthology series Channel Zero. The season will premiere at some point later this year. [via Bloody Disgusting]
• Despite the fact that his character is dead, Dan Stevens is going around spreading rumors that he might pop up in the Downton Abbey movie. He could be joking or the movie could be utilizing flashbacks, but it’d be much more exciting if Downton Abbey were dipping into sci-fi nonsense for once. [via The Wrap]
• Production has officially begun on Jinn, Netflix’s first Arabic series. The show will be a supernatural soap opera based on Middle Eastern mythology, and it will launch on Netflix next year. [via Coming Soon]