Good lord, she's not playing Anne, is she? That's just very, very poor casting.

Seriously, Academy Award-winner Shirley MacLaine has joined the cast of Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning, CTV announced yesterday.

MacLaine, 73, will play matriarch Amelia Thomas, alongside Rachel Blanchard (as Louisa Thomas), Barbara Hershey (as the grown-up Anne Shirley) and Hannah Endicott-Douglas (as the young Anne Shirley).

Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning is a made-for-TV movie that will air sometime in 2008.

"Shirley MacLaine is a screen legend," executive producer/director/writer Kevin Sullivan said in a statement. "To be able to cast her unique personality in the role of Amelia Thomas promises to bring both humour and pathos to this production, in a grand style that only a movie star of her stature can elicit."