News

Exclusive: Concord Originals has elevated Charles Hopkins to Vice President of Development and Wesley Adams to Vice President of Production and Distribution,

Considered one of the preeminent homes for music- and theatre-to-screen development, the company has also promoted Imogen Lloyd Webber to the new role of Executive Vice President of Marketing and Communications (Worldwide) for Concord Originals and Theatricals, the theatre division of Concord.

Previously serving as Director of Development and Production, Hopkins will focus going forward on developing scripted and unscripted projects for film and television across a variety of genres. Among the projects he’s producing is the biopic on Robert Johnson, the King of the Delta Blues, on which Concord Originals is partnering with Jesse Collins Entertainment, as we were recently first to tell you.

Formerly Director of Development and Production, Adams will oversee all aspects of production and distribution for the Concord Originals slate from concept...

Exclusive: Jesse Collins Entertainment and Concord Originals are partnering on a biopic of Robert Johnson, the influential musician nicknamed the King of the Delta Blues.

The project will mark the first authorized narrative feature on Johnson, a figure famous for his culture-defining influence on rock legends like the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin. Ridgeway Wilson (Black Girls Rock!) is set to write the script.

Born in Mississippi in 1911, Johnson pursued his passion for music partly as a way to avoid the sharecropper lifestyle prescribed to him by the American South. He took the tortuous lifestyle that came with being a Black man in that time and place and transformed his personal experience into music of universal relevance and global reach. When he died at 27, allegedly murdered by the jealous boyfriend of a former lover, his few recordings debuted posthumously at Carnegie Hall. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,...

Exclusive: Paramount+ has acquired the Cyndi Lauper documentary Let the Canary Sing and has set the premiere date for June 4 in the U.S. and Canada; the UK, Australia, Latin America, Brazil, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria can watch a day later.

Deadline has your first look at the trailer above.

Additionally, a companion album of the same name will be released by Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment. Tracks include many of her songs from her days in Blue Angel to her breakout single “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” to “True Colors” and “I Drove All Night,” to name a few.

Directed by Emmy Award-winning documentarian Alison Ellwood, Let the Canary Sing “chronicles Lauper’s meteoric ascent to stardom and her profound impact on generations through her music, ever-evolving punk style, unwavering feminism and tireless advocacy. The documentary takes the audience on an engaging...

Exclusive: Submarine has acquired worldwide distribution rights to Ilya Chaiken’s music documentary feature Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks, ahead of its world premiere at Doc NYC.

Concord Originals, the narrative content creation division of L.A.-based music management company Concord, has come on board to finance and produce.

The film revolves around influential underground New York punk band Les Lunachicks which had its heyday in the 1990s with songs such as Fallopian Rhapsody and Bitterness Barbie, and performed live with the likes of No Doubt, Green Day, The Offspring, The Go-Go’s, Nofx, Rancid, The Ramones, Rev Horton Heat, The Buzzcocks and Joan Jett.

Director and producer Chaiken catches up with the group decades after its messy break-up as its members attempt to reunite for one last show.

“I’ve been a devoted Lunachicks fangirl since I lucked into their very first show in 1988 when we were all teenagers.

It is directed by Alison Ellwood and financed by Sony Music Entertainment and Concord Originals.

London-based documentary specialist Dogwoof has picked up international sales, excluding North America, for Alison Ellwood’s Let The Canary Sing – a documentary feature chronicling US musician Cyndi Lauper’s career that has spanned over four decades.

It will world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival in June, and be introduced to buyers next week at Cannes.

Let The Canary Sing is a Fine Point Films production, produced by Trevor Birney, Eimhear O’Neill and Andrew Tully. It is executive produced by Lisa Barbaris and Gregory P. Cimino II,...

Exclusive: Alberto Ferreras’ novel B as in Beauty is getting the TV treatment.

The book is in the works for a series adaptation from writers Manuel Figueroa and Jordan Heimer after Concord Originals partnered with Marsh Entertainment and Telemundo Streaming Studios. No broadcaster is attached.

The bilingual dramedy will follow Bella “B” Zavala, whose personal life, career and relationships are at best a mess. That is until she meets a mysterious and unique woman who offers her a moonlighting job as an emotional companion. Through the unexpected adventures she faces with her eccentric new clients, Bella’s own notions of beauty, love and self-worth will never be the same.

Figueroa and Heimer previously developed drama series The Three Joaquins at ABC. The pair served as executive story editors on Starz’s Step Up: High Water and developed Eastside at NBC with Ruben Fleisher’s The District and previously staffed on...

Beloved American ventriloquist Shari Lewis and her popular sock puppet Lamb Chop will be the subject of a new documentary feature from White Horse Pictures and MoJo Global Arts.

“Shari & Lamb Chop” will be directed by Emmy-nominated Lisa D’Apolito, director of “Love, Gilda,” the documentary about the late Saturday Night Live comedian Gilda Radner.

As a young female ventriloquist with big aspirations, Shari Lewis was searching for a voice who could say things that a young woman in the 1950s could not, and found it in a sock puppet named Lamb Chop. The duo debuted on CBS children’s television series “Captain Kangaroo” in 1956 and went on to attain cultural icon status in the U.S. by the end of the 20th century.

Lewis died in 1998. The documentary will examine her journey, which included winning 13 Emmys and a Peabody and authoring 60 children’s books, and her impact on children’s...