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Hot off the success of La La Land, Damien Chazelle is setting his sights on TV.
The Oscar-winning director is attached to helm The Eddy, a musical drama set in contemporary multicultural Paris that revolves around a club, its owner, the house band and the volatile city that surrounds them. The project will be written by Jack Thorne, who recently penned the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child alongside J.K. Rowling.
WME, which packaged the project, is shopping the script to cable and streaming outlets, according to sources. The heat surrounding Chazelle, following the critical and commercial success of La La Land, should all but ensure the high-profile project finds a home. Grammy-winning songwriter Glen Ballard, who is best known for co-writing Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill and Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror,” and Six Feet Under‘s Alan Poul are attached as executive producers.
Going from an Oscar-nominated film to a TV project is no longer a rare move. In fact, mere weeks after Moonlight took home best picture, director Barry Jenkins announced he would be adapting Colson Whitehead’s novel Underground Railroad for Amazon. The streamer is also prepping David O. Russell’s untitled mafia drama starring Julianne Moore and Robert De Niro and Nicolas Winding Refn’s crime drama Too Old to Die Young starring Miles Teller. Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts are among the other A-listers who are turning their attention to the small screen.
At 32, Chazelle became the youngest best director Oscar winner in history when he took home the trophy in February for his modern-day musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. The Lionsgate film also made a strong profit for the studio, grossing $150 million at the domestic box office and over $280 million internationally. Chazelle first gained traction for writing and directing Whiplash, a 2014 Sundance winner and Oscar nominee starring Teller.
Chazelle will continue building out his feature portfolio, too. Up next he will direct First Man, Universal’s Neil Armstrong biopic. The film will reunite the writer-director with Gosling, who is attached to play the astronaut. In addition, the scribe’s mystery The Claim — a script that appeared on the Black List in 2010 — was recently picked up by Motion Picture Capital, Route One and Oceanside Media with plans for a 2018 release.
Thorne, a BAFTA-winning English screenwriter and playwright, is penning the long-gestating DC movie The Sandman for Warner Bros. He also is adapting Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials for BBC One and is writing an episode of Amazon and Channel 4’s anthology series Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams starring Timothy Spall.
Chazelle is repped by WME, Exile Entertainment and Don Steele at Hansen Jacobson. Thorne is repped by UTA, Casarotto and Frankfurt Kurnit.
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