Series Orders

Netflix has Greenlit The Get Down from Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!, Romeo + Juliet) through Sony Pictures Television.

Over 13 music-driven one-hour episodes scheduled for 2016, Luhrmann will follow a group of South Bronx teenagers and the rise of hip-hop, disco and punk rock amid the poverty, high crime, urban blight and near civic bankruptcy of New York at its historic nadir in the ’70s.

In addition to executive producing, Luhrmann  will direct the first two episodes as well as the season finale. Quoted in the press release, the directors says: ““In this golden era of TV, the Netflix culture puts no constraint on creative possibilities. So it is a natural home for The Get Down, a project I have been contemplating and working on now for over 10 years. Throughout, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of how a city in its lowest moment, forgotten and half destroyed, could give birth to such creativity and originality in music, art and culture. I’m thrilled to be working with my partners at Sony and collaborating with a team of extraordinary writers and musicians, many of whom grew up with and lived the story we’ve set out to tell.”

The series will premiere in 2016

Find more information on Twitter at @TheGetDown.

via: Press Release

Josh ‘Sawyer’ Holloway and his Lost executive producer Carlton Cuse are reteaming for the alien invasion drama Colony which was given a 10-episode order by USA Network. Holloway will be joined onscreen by Sarah Wayne Callies (The Walking Dead).

USA blurbs the new show thusly: “Colony centers on a family torn by opposing forces and making difficult decisions as they balance staying together with surviving the struggle of the human race. Set in the near future, the story takes place in Los Angeles, which exists in a state of occupation by a force of outside intruders. Some people choose to collaborate with the authorities and benefit from the new order, while others rebel and suffer the consequences.”

Holloway will play an ex-FBI guy brought in to help push back against the resistance. I have no doubt moral dilemmas ensue. Callies will play his wife, because of course she will. Entertainment Gods forbid she get a more meaningful description than that. They’re joined by Amanda Righetti (The Mentalist) as Callies’ sister, mother of a diabetic child.

Cuse will co-write and co-executive produce with Ryan Condal (2014’s Hercules).

via: TVLine

Once known mainly as a purveyor of soft-core porn (“Skinemax“), HBO’s little brother Cinemax continues to branch out into series television with Quarry, based on the novels by Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition). The series will be directed and executive produced by Emmy-winner Greg Yaitanes (House, M.D.) who helms Cinemax’s best known series Banshee.

Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus) will play Mac Conway, a Marine sniper who returns to Tennessee from Vietnam in 1972 and becomes a contract killer when he’s rejected by his family and society.

The cast include Scottish actor Peter Mullan (Olive Kitteridge, Hunger) , Nikki Amuka-Bird (Luther), Jamie Hector (The Wire) and Damon Herriman who just wrapped up a memorable performance as “Dewey Crowe” on FX’s Justified.

Quarry is created by Graham Gordy & Michael D. Fuller (Rectify) who share executive producer credit with Collins, Yaitanes, Steve Golin (True Detective), Matt DeRoss & David Kanter (The End of the Tour) and Ken Levin (The Scribbler). Collins is listed as a writer on the series as well as Jennifer Schurr (Hannibal).

Production is set to begin March 30. No premiere date has been announced.

via: Press release

Fresh off her critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated film Selma, producer/director Ava DuVernay is re-teaming with Selma producer/co-star Oprah Winfrey to create a drama series for Oprah’s OWN network.

Production is set to begin later this year on the project inspired by Natalie Baszile’s 2014 first novel Queen Sugar which tells the story of a widowed mother who uproots her reluctant 11-year-old daughter and moves from urban Los Angeles to rural Louisiana to oversee a sugarcane field she inherited from her father. Family tension mounts when her estranged brother and his 6-year-old son arrive.

In addition to producing, Winfrey will appear in a recurring role.

Selma will vie for Best Picture and Best Song at the 87th Annual Academy Awards on February 22.

via: Press Release