A busy John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox) has updated his blog, including news of a recurring role in Prison Break, a series that will make its run for freedom on FOX in March.

As reported earlier by Futon Critic, Billingsley is part of an ensemble cast for ABC pilot Nine Lives, a drama about nine strangers who bond after a hostage crisis from a bank robbery gone bad. "It’s a very exciting project," says Billingsley. "I play a mild-mannered schlub who is at the end of his tether (ball-busting wife, something I can’t personally relate to, but we actors must use our imaginations, after all) and who, in the crisis, comes through with flying colors — the attendant outpouring of media attention (he dons the mantle of ’hero) makes him re-evaluate his dead-end life." Filming commences next month.

Billingsley appears in two upcoming movies by Free Enterprise’s Mark A. Altman: Dead & Deader, which Fangoria describes as "an action/comedy about a Special Forces officer who becomes part-human/part-zombie and must stop the deadly spread of an infection which threatens to turn the entire human population into flesheating ghouls." Billingsley also features in Altman’s supernatural thriller Room 6, about a woman who must confront her demons in mysterious events after her fiance ends up in a horror hospital. The flick will be released on special-edition DVD by Anchor Bay on June 6th (6-6-06).

Genre film Man From Earth is about a man who claims to be immortal, relocating his life every ten years to maintain his secret. Writer Jerome Bixby (Star Trek "Mirror, Mirror") completed this story on his deathbed in 1998.

Billingsley notes that his wife Bonnie, a.k.a Bonita Friedericy, "is up for a series regular part herself, which she doesn’t want me to talk about cuz it might prove jinx-ish. But I’ll keep everybody posted." Miss Bonnie appeared as Borg Rooney in ENT "Regeneration," and she’s seen in the pilot episode of David Boreanaz’s new series Bones.

Mosey on over to JohnBillingsley.Net for more.

An extended-cut DiviMax version of Free Enterprise, with new CGI FX and extras, comes to DVD on March 7th in the U.S.A. and Canada.