Florida Georgia Line’s Brian Kelley Co-Producing New ABC Country Drama
Brian Kelley is flexing his creative muscles in new ways in 2020. The Florida Georgia Line member has teamed up with Empire co-creator Lee Daniels to co-executive produce a new country-focused ABC television drama.
According to Billboard, Kelley and Daniels' new project is titled Moss Landing and will be "a drama with musical elements" that follows the relationship between Marion James, a disgraced country singer, and Sky Miller, a gospel and soul singer.
"Set in a small Florida coastal town ... [t]he show would unravel the mysteries of their troubled pasts and follow Marion and Sky through the highs and lows of rebuilding their lives and the love that binds them together -- all set to genre-bending musical numbers," the publication explains.
Moss Landing is being written by Lee Shipman, co-creator of The Son and Hemlock Grove, who who is also lined up as showrunner if the series gets picked up. Shipman shares executive producer credits with Daniels and Kelley as well, along with Mar Velez of Daniels' Lee Daniels Entertainment and Stephen Snedden and Justin Halliwell of Kelley's CuzBro.
ABC has offered a script commitment-plus-penalty deal for Moss Landing, meaning that the network will pay up if it does not pick up the series. The network seems sweet on Daniels, however, as he also has a new show called Cupcake Men in development with them. Daniels has plenty of experience with music-focused shows, too: In addition to the hip-hop-centric Empire, he's the co-creator of Star, both for Fox.
In addition to this new TV show, Kelley is also working on a new country musical, titled May We All. He's co-producing that project, named for an FGL hit, which tells a story about "disappearing small-town America as seen through the hopeful eyes of its youth" and will feature songs made famous by a variety of country artists. The musical is scheduled for a developmental run in Memphis this year.
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