Famous Alabama record producers are generating two national TV series and a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
CMT has announced that its series, “Sun Records,” about the famous Sam Phillips label and studio will premiere Feb. 23, and will be running on the same night as the popular music series “Nashville.”
The title for the series was recently changed from the “Million Dollar Quartet,” which was a hit musical.
It’s not the only Sam Phillips project. Leonardo DiCaprio has signed on to produce and star in an upcoming, biopic about the Sun Records founder who produced landmark records by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and many more.
DiCaprio has signed on to produce and star in the biopic, according to Deadline Hollywood, and Mick Jagger will also be a producer on the film. The movie, being made for Paramount Pictures, is being adapted from Peter Guralnick’s book “Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll.”
Finally, IM Global and Johnny Depp have signed on to produce a TV series based on Rick Hall’s autobiography about founding FAME Studio, the small Muscle Shoals studio that had a huge impact on American music. That project is still in the planning stages, and while it has been announced that Depp will be a producer on the series, no run date has been announced.
“Sun Records” will star Chad Michael Murray as Phillips, the late record producer who was born on a farm near Florence, Alabama and went on to help discover such musical greats as Presley, Perkins, Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Ike Turner.
Billy Gardell plays Presley’s manager Colonel Tom Parker, Drake Milligan is Presley, Kevin Fonteyne is Cash, Christian Lees is Lewis, and Kerry Holliday is Turner.
But the true star of both the TV shows and the film is expected to be the music.
The Rick Hall series, which is based on Hall’s autobiography “The Man From Muscle Shoals: My Journey from Shame to Fame,” chronicles not only Hall’s life but the formative years of rock’n’roll.
“Muscle Shoals is the spiritual breeding ground for some of the most iconic songs recorded in American history,” IM Global Music President David Schulhof told Deadline Hollywood. “The songs recorded at FAME Studios would later be embraced and recorded by artists around the world for generations to come.”
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