Steven Seagal Gets a Real Badge, Reality Show

The actor is out for a TV gig, showing off his crime-fighting skills in A&E reality show

Steven Seagal is out for justice again...this time for realsies.

The erstwhile big-screen action hero has become an honest-to-goodness crimefighter in New Orleans, a gig he's ready to share with the TV-viewing public.

His movie career mired in the direct-to-DVD dustbin, Seagal, 57, has now been deputized by  the Jefferson Parish County Sheriff's Office, and he's preparing a Cops-like reality series for A&E that documents his efforts to clean up the Big Easy. The show is set to premiere in late 2009.

We're just waiting for the inevitable programming block of Steven Seagal: Lawman and Dog the Bounty Hunter. TiVos set for stunned.

Meanwhile, in the day's other top casting news...

 • Vera Farmiga, who came between Leonardo DiCaprio and  Matt Damon in The Departed, is now teaming up with George Clooney in Up in the Air.  The dramedy from Juno director Jason Reitman follows Clooney, who plays a frequent-flier-mileage-obsessed HR counselor. Farmiga plays a businesswoman he meets on his travels.

 • That '70s Show alum Mila Kunis is joining Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman in The Book of Eli, a sci-fi apocalpytic tale from Allen and Albert Hughes about a lone man (Washington) traveling across America to guard a sacred text that could save humanity.

 • George Lopez, Billy Ray Cyrus, Amber Valletta and Katherine Boecher are filling out the B-list cast of the new Jackie Chan comedy The Spy Next Door. Chan plays a suburban man pressed into action to protect his neighbors' kids after they accidentally download a secret code.